Guardians Of The Keep

CHAPTER 34

Gerick

It was sometime after my return from the desert that I first ran across the Leiran boy. I had been out riding with my new riding master, a nasty Zhid warrior named Fengara. She made Murn look as kind as the old housekeeper at Comigor. On that particular day, she had slaves set fires with some of the dry thorn bushes that passed for vegetation in Ce Uroth, and I had to make my horse carry me between them.

Zigget was the worst-tempered horse I had ever ridden, and at the first sight of the flaming barriers he went wild, rearing and kicking until I thought my arms might get pulled from their sockets before I had him through the first pair. He repaid my efforts by throwing me on the ground after every pass, snorting and threatening to trample me. Fengara was no help. She ridiculed me for my lack of riding skill and my inability to control the horse with my power. But nothing worked, no matter what I tried, words or whips or sorcery.

By sunset, Zigget was frothing and quivering and tossing his head, but I had no sympathy. I was a mass of bruises and scrapes and thought I might have torn something in my knee. No stable hands were anywhere in sight, so I wrestled Zigget into his box myself and slammed the gate. He bucked and kicked the walls until they shook.

“Bash your brains out, you stupid beast,” I yelled and started out of the stable.

I didn’t get ten paces from Zigget’s stall when my knee buckled. I sat heavily on the straw, wishing a plague on horses and the Lords and the vile, wretched desert. When the throbbing in my knee had eased back below the point of impossibility, and I had hauled myself up to my feet, I heard a soft voice from Zigget’s box. “A right mess you are. He oughtn’t have done it. Serve him right if you were to bash his brains out. Too bad there are those that care for him, or I’d bash him myself for leaving you like this.”

It was the wrong day to cross me. I hobbled back to the stall, determined to see who dared speak so of me. I would show him who could bash who. I threw open the gate of the stall, and there was Zigget, the most despicable beast in Ce Uroth, peaceably nuzzling a dirty boy who sat on an upturned barrel. The boy’s head was leaning on Zigget’s neck, not an arm’s length from the teeth that had come near removing my fingers earlier that day.

“What are you doing with my horse, slave?” For some reason the scene infuriated me near bursting.

The boy jumped up. He was not a slave, but one of the uncollared servants, a Drudge. I sometimes forgot they could talk, they were all so stupid.

“Well?”

He shrugged his shoulders and looked vague, as if he didn’t know what I was talking about. A snort and a thump from behind him distracted my attention. Zigget had kicked another hole in the wall.

I pulled out my knife. “I’ll take care of you, you cursed bag of bones. You’ll not live to throw me again.”

“If you’d treat him right, he wouldn’t go loony at the sight of you,” said the boy, stepping between me and the horse.

“Get out of my way.” I waved the knife at him.

“It’s not his fault.”

“He’s wild and wicked and deserves to die.” I pushed the boy aside, my knife ready to strike as soon as Zigget stopped bucking.

“I guess it’s all you know how to do any more-kill what doesn’t suit.” The boy wasn’t really talking to me, but I heard him clearly. Such anger rose up in me that before I knew it, I had him pinned to the floor, ready to put my knife in his throat instead of Zigget’s. Though he was bigger than me, he was easy. He knew nothing of true hand combat.

“Go ahead, if you want,” he said. “I’m nobody. That’s clear enough. But you’ll not master Firebreather without killing him. Then it’ll be nothing but killing forever.”

I held the knife over the boy for a long time, waiting for him to look scared, but he never did. My aching head was filled with darkness, and Parven stirred. So angry you are… What problem is there, young Lord?

“Nothing,” I gritted my teeth and stood up, pushing the boy away with my feet. I was too tired for the Lords. They always wanted to pick everything apart-use every bruise and every breath for a lesson. I wanted no more schooling today. This was an insolent, powerless boy and a stupid horse. “There’s nothing wrong. Fengara worked me hard, and I hate her, just as you wish. I’m hot and thirsty, and I have a knee the size of a melon. But since I’m not to be comfortable, it will take me a while to get back to the house, so leave me alone.”

Parven chuckled in my head, and it made me angry again.

“Leave me alone!” I let darkness roll over him, until I couldn’t hear him any more, and I felt like I was alone inside my head. It was oddly pleasing to know I could do such a thing.

Of course, the boy couldn’t have heard Parven. He looked at me strangely and laid his hand on Zigget’s neck. The demon horse nosed his hair like an old granny.

“How do you do that?” A suspicion came over me, and I laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder. No, he was not Dar’Nethi.

“I call his name and tell him about grass. He likes it.”

“Grass?” When I spoke, Zigget flared his nostrils. I backed away in a hurry, out of range of a flying hoof. But to my everlasting annoyance, my foot slipped, and I ended up on the floor of the stall, my knife flying somewhere out of reach, and a hay bundle toppling off a stack right onto my head. The boy turned his face away quickly and made a choking noise. His shoulders started shaking. It seemed odd that he would be afraid, after being so calm when I was about to slit his throat.

“Turn around this way,” I said.

He looked over his shoulder at me and snorted, then tried to look sober. But he couldn’t, and he burst out laughing. No one laughed in Zhev’Na.

“What’s so damned funny?”

“Just… well… one as dignified as yourself… in such a wicked, magical place as this… coming so close to killing me not five breaths ago… and then getting knocked over by hay and a horse turd. It just don’t seem all that fearsome.”

I stared at him in disbelief. He scratched his head and squirmed and tried to stop laughing, but then he would burst out again. “I’m sorry, my lord,” he said, once he was able to talk again. “I’m truly sorry you’re hurt. Should I get someone to help?”

I didn’t want anyone else seeing me in such a state. It was dangerous in many ways. “I don’t need anyone.”

“No. I can see surely not,” he said.

I hauled myself up on the gate hinges, and tried to swing the gate open and get away, but the fall had made my knee worse, and I could scarcely take a step. The boy put his hand on Zigget, and said, “Stay. Settle.” Then he opened the gate and disappeared into the gloomy stable, coming back with a broken wooden pole that I could use for a cane.

As soon as I was up and out of the stall, he went back to Zigget and closed the gate behind him, leaving me to hobble my way across the yard and through the fortress. I was halfway back to the Gray House before I realized that the boy and I had been speaking Leiran. It was too far to go back, and I was too tired. I wanted a river of hot water and ten hours in my bed, and I knew the Lords would be waiting to teach me more lessons. But I told myself that I would find that insolent boy again and have him explain a few things.

I couldn’t do any training the next day. My knee was purple and black and had swelled up almost as large as my head. When my swordmaster came to see why I wasn’t in the fencing yard, he looked at it and frowned. “You need a surgeon. You should have said something last night.”

“I told Lord Parven about it,” I said. I had to work hard not to yell when he touched it.

Half an hour later a bearded Zhid came into my apartments, followed by a young slave, carrying a leather case. I was sitting in a chair with my leg propped up on a footstool. The surgeon, named Mellador, commanded the slave to place a towel under my arm that rested on the chair, and then to kneel close beside my chair. The slave had the tight, edgy look to him that meant that he was acting under compulsion. It was easy to recognize.

“A nasty injury, Your Grace, but we should have no difficulty,” said the surgeon, clucking and fussing over my knee. “There will be only a slight burning as I make the incision.”

I couldn’t imagine what he was doing when he spread a yellow ointment on my forearm, and most likely my mouth dropped open like an idiot when he pulled a knife from his case and made a neat, finger-length incision in the same spot. My arm was mostly numb, only stinging, as he’d said. I tried to pull away, but he gripped my wrist.

“Surely you’ve seen a healing, Your Grace. If not… my utmost apologies for not explaining. Your injury is too severe for ordinary means, and the Lords wish no delay in your training. We shall have it improved quite swiftly. Hold still.”

Before I could come out with a single question, Mellador commanded the slave to hold out his arm. The youth obeyed, but as he did so, he looked at me with such an intense, solemn expression that I found myself shifting away from him uneasily. Mellador then cut a gash in the slave’s arm just above his metal wrist band. The cut was much deeper than my own, almost to the bone, and it began bleeding profusely. The slave did not cry out, but sucked in a deep, shaking breath. The surgeon bound the slave’s arm to mine with a strip of linen, then laid his hands on the slave’s head. A brilliant, burning flash filled my head-incredible power, boiling red-and-black fire that coursed through my veins, so sharp and vivid that it almost lifted me off the chair.

Now to work… The surgeon’s voice had ridden the wave of power into my mind… mmm… a touch here… and here… I felt the torn pieces in my knee stretch and knit themselves together again, and what felt like chips of bone that were floating loose make their way back where they belonged. Soon, the discolor of my knee began to fade and the swelling to shrink. Instead of painful throbbing, only a pulsing warmth remained in the joint. I touched my knee with my free hand and was amazed.

I heard a gasping moan at my elbow. The slave was pale and trembling, the bones of his face outlined with pain, his eyes hot with anger. The surgeon’s fingers were wrapped about his head like the legs of a huge, pale spider. Even as I watched, the slave’s eyes went dead, his mouth dropped open, and spit dripped out of the side of it.

While we have a bit left, we’ll take care of your other aches and pains. You have quite a healthy young body, but it appears you’ve taken quite a pounding this week. Mellador was still chattering inside my head, and the burning wave coursed through my veins like Papa’s brandy I had stolen to taste when I was small. And as all my bruises and soreness were eased, the slave slumped heavily against my chair.

“What have you done?” I said, finding my voice far too late.

“Quite finished now. Looks like we’d have to bring in another slave if you had one more scrape.”

He untied the flaccid arm from my own, and pushed the lifeless slave onto the floor, thrusting a wad of towels under him to prevent any blood from staining the tile. There was no sign of my incision, and no remnant of my injury, only a vile taste in my mouth and the boiling darkness in my blood.

“He’s dead.”

“Who… the slave? Of course. I’m glad I brought one with a considerable amount of vigor left in him, else we might not have been able to take care of all your ills.”

“Get out!”

“My lord?”

“Get out!” I jumped up from the chair and backed away from the surgeon and the results of his work. “Take him with you. If I see you again, I’ll kill you.”

Notole spoke in my mind. Are you not healed properly, my young Prince? Has Mellador displeased you in some way? We’ve not had time to discuss the process of healing.

“I didn’t know he was going to kill the slave. My knee would have gotten better on its own.”

But what better use for a slave than to put his master in good health? Mellador has prescribed a day’s rest, and…

… you will be able to go back to your proper business. It was Ziddari. Why are you unsettled, young Lord? You plan to kill these Dar’Nethi pigs in war. You have killed three in your sparring already. They live only at your pleasure and that of the Lords of Zhev’Na.

But there was a difference. Killing a soldier in battle was honorable. Killing a sparring partner-this was the first time they had told me that any of them had died-but that was almost the same. The practice slaves were trying to kill me, too. I had heard that slaves sometimes killed warriors in training, and they weren’t even punished for it. But to take his life for power… to cure bruises and scrapes such as any boy might get…

It is just. Remember it, said Ziddari. There is no difference in that slave and the rat you killed last week with your spear. Any Dar’Nethi would kill you in an instant if he was freed. We didn’t expect that you would have difficulty with this.

“I… I just wasn’t expecting it. Of course, I understand all you say.” I said what they wanted to hear, because I wanted them to leave me alone for a while. As I had the night before in the stable, I let darkness fill my head to block out their presence.

When the surgeon had gone, along with all evidence of his work, I called my slaves to run a bath. Hot, I said. Hotter than the desert. Though the midday heat hammered on the Gray House, and there was not the slightest stirring of the sultry air, I was as cold as if that red-black flood inside me had turned to black ice.

I spent two hours in the hot water, wondering what I would do for the rest of the afternoon. I wanted to get back to my training. That was the best time of every day. Nothing to think about except what you were doing right then.

I tried to sleep, but all I could see was the slave’s eyes, gray and clear. Accusing me. He had known what was going to happen-that they were going to kill him to heal me. That was what his look had meant. And then his eyes grew angry, then empty, and then they were dead.

My real father was a Dar’Nethi Healer. Was that what he did?

I threw down the sword I was polishing and pulled on my riding leathers. I didn’t care what the surgeon had said.

Fengara wasn’t in the stable, as she’d been told I wasn’t coming. So I saddled Zigget and rode into the desert alone.

Alone? Risky you know, young Lord. Our enemies might be able to locate you outside the fortress. Ziddari.

“No one would dare attack me. I bear the mark of the Lords.”

Ziddari kept picking at me, asking questions, telling me I should come back, let my knee heal. But I rode harder and faster, laying my whip into Zigget until the afternoon desert was a red blur, and soon I couldn’t hear Ziddari anymore.

I didn’t slow until the sun was low in the west. I had no idea how far I had ridden, but Zigget’s flanks were heaving, so I headed back toward the fortress at a walk, trying to cool him down as the evening came on. But the horse took his revenge. Something scuttered out from under a rock- a kibbazi most likely, a sharp-toothed desert rat. Zigget shied and reared, just when I didn’t expect it, and I found myself sprawled in the dirt.

“Curse you, devil,” I said, shaking myself off and gingerly testing my knee.

Zigget looked at me with blazing hatred in his eye, and then galloped back toward Zhev’Na.

Marvelous, I thought. A nice walk ahead. I wasn’t particularly worried. I could call on the Lords at any time, and they could have fifty warriors with me in a quarter of an hour or make a portal to take me back. But I didn’t want to ask for any favors. At least I had a full waterskin at my belt. I wasn’t stupid enough to go out without it, even though I was stupid enough to take Zigget on a ride alone.

I walked for a long time. Two or three times, the Lords stirred in my head, but I ignored them, shoving my anger between us like a wall. Soon I felt them withdraw, and they left me alone. It felt good to be alone in the night. Sometime around the mid-watch I heard hoofbeats and assumed that the Lords had sent someone for me. Not surprising. I knew I was a lot more valuable to them than they let on. But it wasn’t the Lords. It was Zigget-and the Leiran boy.

“Thought you might be needin‘ a ride.”

“Did the devil confess to you?”

“You might say that.”

He slid off the horse and offered me the reins. Zigget’s nostrils flared, and the horse shied. I kept walking.

“You should have brought another horse. This one won’t carry me again.”

“He’s the strongest and fastest in the stable. He’d be your friend if you’d let him.”

“How do you know so much about him? Is he a relative of yours?”

“He’s a deal better than any kin I ever had. Do you want to know his name?” The boy was walking along beside me, leading the infernal beast.

“I believe his name is Zigget.”

“Nope. Firebreather.”

“And how do you know that?”

“I just know.”

I stopped and glared at the idiot boy. “I’m not a fool. You’re not Dar’Nethi.”

“Call him Firebreather. Try it. Stand over there and call him.” He dropped the reins and stepped away from the horse. I set out walking again. “Call him,” the boy called after me.

“Here, Firebreather,” I shouted, just to silence the Drudge. Before I had walked five paces more, the horse followed behind me, hesitant, quivering, but close enough that his muzzle hung over my shoulder. I stopped, and he stopped.

“Now tell him something nice. Tell him there’s oats to be had at the stable when he gets you there.” He whispered this in my ear, presumably so the horse could get the good news from me.

“Oats?”

“Tell him.”

“Firebreather, there’s oats. Oats in the stable if you behave yourself.” I felt like an idiot.

The horse shifted his feet and blew a slightly happier note.

“Will you bite my hand off if I give you oats in it? This fool of a servant seems to think you are not a Zhid of a horse. Should I believe him?” I raised my hand slowly to pat his nose. He tossed his head. “Oats. Remember oats, Firebreather. I have the power of oats. My feet are indeed tired, thanks to you, but if you have a change of heart, perhaps I can too.”

The horse bobbed his head and allowed me to touch him.

The boy took the horse’s lead. “What did I say? Now he’ll carry you nicely if you keep that up. Remember his name and all. He likes grass better than oats, but maybe you don’t remember nothing about grass to talk to him about.” He held Zigget’s-Firebreather’s-head while I mounted.

“What about grass?”

“How it’s green and soft and grows tall to blow in the wind. How it tickles his legs when he runs and tastes so sweet, especially in the spring when there’s still snow about, but there’s little patches of new green peeking out of it. That’s the best, but he hasn’t seen it in so long.”

The horse grew quieter under the boy’s hand and voice.

“You’d best get up behind me,” I said.

“I couldn’t ride with you.”

“I didn’t kill you.”

“True enough.” He scrambled up behind me. One would think the horse had scooped him up and set him there, he did it so easily.

It was a long ride back. We took it slow, and the boy told me more about the horse and how to get him to do what I wanted.

“How do you know so much about horses?”

“Don’t know. Just always had a feel for it, so my gran said.”

“Your grandmother? Where is she?”

“Dead now. I don’t like to talk about her.”

“Why do you speak Leiran?”

“Leiran?”

“Surely you realize that the language you speak is not the language spoken here. It’s not even from this world. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

“I’m not supposed to say nothing. I’m not supposed to talk to you or even to open my mouth, because I’m too stupid to learn the proper words. Couldn’t you just pretend I didn’t say nothing?”

“The work camp where you were born-were there many that spoke Leiran there?”

“I don’t want to get nobody in trouble.”

“They won’t. Not from me. I just thought it had been so long since those like you came to Ce Uroth that no one could possibly remember their old language. Do you know about the other world? Do other Drudges remember that, too?”

“I know about it. Not many others.”

“That’s astonishing. I’ve only been here a few months, and I hardly remember anything.”

“There’s those that wanted me to remember. Maybe no one wants you to remember nothing.”

We rode in silence for a long time. When we approached the ring of campfires surrounding Zhev’Na, I told the boy to get off the horse. “You’ll walk the rest of the way,” I said. “And I would advise you not to expect any favors for doing me this service. If you’ve half a dram of intelligence, you’ll spit at me whenever you see me.”

“I’m always in the stable.”

I rode away without saying anything more.

When I got back to the Gray House, Darzid was waiting for me. He was dressed all in black, as usual, and was sprawled out on my couch like a giant spider. I ignored him and kicked the slaves that slept on the floor of my bathing room. “Hot water,” I said. “Plenty of it.”

I peeled off my riding clothes and stepped into the bath. I was freezing. Darzid appeared in the doorway and dismissed the slaves. “Where have you been, young Lord?”

“Riding in the desert. You know where I was.”

“We were concerned about you. The healing seemed to upset you.”

“I didn’t like it. You’re right, of course, about it being a good use of a slave. I can see that, but I didn’t like it. It left a bad taste in my mouth, and it hurt when Mellador cut me. So I decided I’d go tame that demon horse so it wouldn’t happen again. I don’t like being thrown about and bruised. I thought it would make me better, harder, to do something about it.”

“Of course. A good thought. And did it work?”

“I think things will go much better tomorrow.”

He smiled and fingered his beard. The smile did not extend to his eyes, however. If I looked close enough, would I see his gold mask and ruby eyes?

“Why did you shut us out?”

I had thought about that a good deal on the way back. “I was tired. The three of you never leave me alone. Sometimes I just can’t learn any more. I think you forget I’m only ten.”

“Eleven. Your birthday passed months ago.”

“Oh.” I had lost track. There had always been a great celebration at Comigor. Food baskets for the tenants and a round of ale for the Guard. A party with Papa and Mama’s friends…

“And so?” said Darzid, a trace of impatience in his voice.

“It gets to where my head’s about to burst with everything. Sometimes I just need to be left alone.” I didn’t like them knowing everything I was thinking or doing or who I was talking to.

“Don’t make it too much of a habit. We are your friends and allies, and we have a great deal to teach you. Your anointing is only months away.”

“And then I’ll be the Heir of D’Arnath?”

“That’s only part of it.”

“What else, then?”

“On your twelfth birthday, the day you come of age…besides taking up the sword of D’Amath, you will take your rightful place alongside your friends and allies. No one in the universe will rival your power, for you are to become one of us-the Fourth Lord of Zhev’Na.”