Son of Avonar

CHAPTER 12

Year 2 in the reign of King Evard

In the season of Seille of the year that I turned twenty-three, Karon and I were wed. The true ceremony took place in the grand drawing room at Windham, Martin’s elegant silk tapestries, crystal, and brass softened by garlands of fragrant evergreen and the light of five hundred candles. Only our four closest friends were there to witness it. I wore dark green velvet and carried roses that Karon had grown for me. Martin placed my hand in Karon’s, and it was difficult to tell which of our company radiated the greatest happiness. Julia swore adamantly that it was Tennice. For my part, I believed that good Arot himself, in that first Long Night at the beginning of the world, could have been gifted with no better friends and no more perfect joy. I notified Tomas of my marriage. In return, I received a letter from his man of business. My marriage portion was to be the townhouse and a settlement sufficient to ensure the Lady Seriana’s position cannot be seen as a reproach to the family. The Duke of Comigor has no wish to enter into any negotiations with any parties, and since his consent to the marriage was not required, he will assume that the consent of the suitor is not required as to the settlement.

Though I knew Evard would have claimed the sizeable dowry my father had set aside for me, I didn’t argue. Karon and I had more than enough. Tomas had not been stingy, and Karon had a gentleman’s income, set up anonymously by his father when Karon had first gone to the University.

Our more public wedding was in Montevial, where my circle of acquaintances had come to know Karon as the new Leiran Commissioner of Antiquities. My former beau, Viscount Mantegna, had told me of the post, vacant for several months since its most recent occupant had died, and I had pestered Karon until he applied for it. My new husband had returned to Montevial with some vague notion of using his income to buy a house in some out-of-the-way place so we could be together, but to leave Montevial made no sense when I held title to my family’s townhouse, a much finer home than anything he could afford. Evard’s marriage and Tomas’s flourishing career had eased the fears that had forced both Karon and me into self-imposed exile, and even Martin agreed that a respectable position and Karon’s intention to forego any privilege of rank would preclude any closer inquiry as to Karon’s origins. Though we would always need to be careful, we believed we had weathered the storm. And truly, the court posting was perfect for him.

The antiquities collection was a conglomeration of cultural rarities and worthless junk dumped haphazardly into the vaults of the royal treasury after every Leiran military victory. No one knew quite what to do with it all. Only the suspicion that abandoning the hoard would somehow subject Leire to the scorn of foreigners, who seemed to value such things, convinced the administrators to replace the deceased commissioner. Karon did not care about the political purposes of the treasure, but considered the position an unparalleled opportunity for anyone with an interest in history and culture. To care for such treasures as they needed to be cared for, to have unlimited access to study and write about them, to have the charter to seek out whatever might be available to augment the collection—he admitted that no position was more suited to the nature of a J’Ettanni scholar. So much to discover.

We kept up a social life in keeping with my rank and Karon’s position, though with far fewer engagements than I had in my year alone. Marriage made me dull, I heard it said. Acquaintances whispered that I had married beneath me, but then it was a fact that I was getting on in age for a first marriage. Indeed, most men would shy away from anyone with my uncomfortable relationship with King Evard, so perhaps I couldn’t afford to be too selective. I cared not a whit for what anyone said.

I still had a thousand questions about sorcery and the J’Ettanne, but Karon was unused to speaking of his secrets, and I was reluctant to begin our life together by forcing him out of his habits. When he was ready, he would tell me everything I wanted to know. I had never felt so deliriously happy, so much at peace, as in those first weeks after our wedding.

Karon reveled in his work, and I delved into my studies with renewed fervor, determined to share in the intellectual pursuits he valued. But as the winter deepened, I noticed a disturbing change in him. It began with a growing restlessness that no amount of walking, riding, or other occupation seemed to satisfy. He would sit with me of an evening to write letters or read, but instead of luring me into two hours’ conversation with some anecdote from his reading, he would throw down his book or his pen after only a short time and stand staring into the fire. No teasing or question, no puzzle or activity or entertainment of any kind could hold his attention, and though his affection seemed undiminished—far from it, in fact—he expressed less and less of it with words. Even after the act of love itself, he could not speak or sleep, but would excuse himself and go walking alone.

I refused to pry. I had observed a similar behavior in his years at Windham; it had always passed without explanation, and I had promised myself to respect his privacy. But on the evening he broke off our planning for Tanager’s thirtieth-birthday celebration, circling the library like a trapped beast and muttering that he couldn’t concentrate, I decided I could no longer wait for explanations…

“Karon, what is it? You’ll wear holes in the floor with your pacing.”

He looked up, his expression that of a deer facing a hunter’s bow. Every terrible fantasy a new wife could invent raced through my mind: he didn’t love me… he felt he had made a mistake… I had displeased him in some way.

“Tell me,” I said. “Whatever it is.”

“Oh gods, Seri. I thought I could be rid of this. With all you give me, I must be a fool.” He paced across our library and picked up a book, riffling through its pages. Without looking at a line of it, he tossed it down again. He crouched and threw a log onto the fire, and then cursed himself when it rolled out, scattering ash and sparks across the rug. He reached for a hearth brush to scoop up the mess, but I snatched it from his hand and pushed him to the floor, seating myself on the rug just in front of him.

“I am your wife. Tell me.”

He breathed deeply, his face sculpted with such distress, I had to force myself still. “Not two months ago I pledged I would never leave you, and here we’ve scarcely begun… I swear to you, Seri, my feelings have not changed, nor has my intent, but I’m afraid my vow must bend.” He took my hands in his, as he unleashed the flood of words. “Do you remember, in those early years at Windham, how I would leave for a few weeks from time to time?”

“Your research trips. Interviews and observations.”

“Well, that wasn’t quite the truth. But of course you didn’t know about me. If I’d told you I had to go because my blood was on fire, you would have thought me mad.”

“Most likely.”

He tried to smile. I could not even attempt it. His hands were near scorching my own.

“To describe it so would have been… would be… no exaggeration. This gift I have is forbidden by every law and custom in the world, yet would be far easier to ignore my eyes or my heart or to forgo speech or breathing than to abandon it. The journeys I made from Windham were to every manner of place. In such times as ours, it’s not difficult to find those who need what I have to offer. Though there aren’t ten people on this earth who would knowingly accept healing from a sorcerer, many are desperate enough to ask no questions.”

He kneaded my fingers, then bundled them up and enfolded them in his own. “What I’m trying to say in this stupidly muddled way is that I cannot stop. I thought I could after I came back last autumn. After a year of wandering, of doing little else but healing, I was spent. I thought that perhaps I had done enough, and from then on, it could be only when I would choose. I swore I’d never do anything to endanger you, even if it meant I never used my talents again. But that’s impossible. Neither my body nor my mind will allow me to ignore what I am. If I’m not on this earth to heal, then I cannot understand the purpose of my life. And if I fail to heed this call, then I’m afraid you may wake one morning to find a lunatic in your bed. I have to go, Seri, until I can settle again.”

“Will you come back?”

He drew our clasped hands to his burning forehead and breathed the words. “I swear to you that I’ll come back as soon as I quiet this demon in me.”

I had planned that my life would be different from the lives of other Leiran women. How often my mother had heard my father say, “My duty is to my king. I cannot take my ease in bed with you when there are battles to be fought and won.” She, as all warriors’ wives, had spent her life waiting for her husband to come home from war. But as a girl, I had nurtured dreams of fighting my own battles, of leading merchant caravans, or exploring the wild lands beyond our borders—a life of more purpose than waiting.

And so, as Karon told me haltingly of the strange fever that grew in him the longer he denied himself use of his power, I began to envision possibilities: travel together, adventure, not bloody combat with swords and severed limbs and looted cities, but secret kindness and magical escapes. I could help him tend his patients, divert suspicions, watch his back while he was occupied with his magic. When he fell silent, looking a little puzzled, I burst out with my ideas. “Well, at least you needn’t go alone anymore…”

But Karon dismissed my fantasies as quickly as they’d grown. “The places I go are not for you: battlefields, border villages, the poorest quarters of any city, disease and danger in every corner. And the way I have to manage it, in secret, always hiding, in disguise, ready to run at any moment. It would be impossible for two. I’ve no love for putting myself in jeopardy, but I cannot—will not—endanger you. I’ll not take you.”

I argued with him all the rest of that evening and into the next day, as he gathered a few things to take with him on his journey: some plain and sturdy clothes, a worn brown cloak with deep pockets on the inside, a supply of food, and a flask of wine. But despite my best reasoning, my escalating accusations of his mistrust and his disdain of my abilities, and a serious threat to bar him from my bed when he returned, he would not even tell me where he was going.

“I tell you again,” he said, “you are the most capable, most intelligent, most determined person I know—man or woman. I trust you with my life every hour. But this is for your safety. If I were to— If anything were to happen— which I promise it will not—you must have no idea where I’ve gone. You can say that I was a typical blockheaded man and refused to allow a woman to know of my business. Be ignorant and blame me for it. Promise me…” Even with all his peaceful ways, Karon could be stubborn.

Only as he led his horse from our stable and kissed me did I relent. “Then I suppose this is the way it must be,” I said. But only for now, I thought. I was stubborn, too.

He did come back, after only five days away. Four weeks later, he had to leave again. Sometimes he was gone for a week, rarely more than two. He would return home tired, sometimes grieving, but always at peace. And after a few weeks, the restlessness would begin to grow in him again. I came to recognize its onset before Karon did.

At first, he did not speak of his journeys even after he came home. I quite pointedly refused to ask about them, acting as though he’d not even been away. But after one four-week absence that had left me so frantic with worry that I could not pretend indifference, he broke his silence. Late on the night of his return, after a singularly desperate lovemaking, he held me in the dark of our bedchamber and began to tell me of a poor, isolated village near the Kerotean border that was devastated by a wasting sickness that had left three quarters of its people and all of its children dead. I let him talk until he fell asleep. He never spoke of it again.

But as time went on he did open this most private part of his life to me. He told of towns rife with fever, of Kerotean settlements ravaged by bandits, of streets where children grew malformed because their food had been taken for soldiers or because their childhoods had been sold for labor in mines or quarries. He would work until someone asked questions or until he had done all he could do.

So many of us lived our lives without accomplishing anything of worth. I could only marvel at the stupidities of a world that would call such a gift, so freely given, evil.

Deep on one night in early spring, when Karon was away on one of his journeys, I was awakened by the soft pad of footsteps crossing the wood floor of our bedchamber. Beyond the bed-curtains a faint light moved from the direction of the doorway to the far wall where a washing cabinet stood between the windows. I huddled silently under the bedclothes, cursing my foolish presumption that just because I shared a bed with a sorcerer I could forego the Comigor custom of hanging knife and sword above the bed. A medley of strange sounds came from the room: a bundle laid down, a quickly silenced ring of metal, the clink of glass. Time passed. My terror turned to puzzlement. No one had murdered me. Thieves would have taken what valuables I owned and fled. Pouring liquid… ripping cloth… a man’s muffled curse… Karon…

I yanked open the bed-curtains and saw him standing shirtless by the washing cabinet, dabbing at his side. “Seri! Gods, I’m sorry…” He tried to hide it from me with a ripped and bloody towel. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

“And did you think to sneak away again once you’d ruined all my towels?” I said, pulling his hands away to see a long, blood-crusted gash in his side. Ugly and painful, but not too deep at least.

“I just wanted to clean up a bit before you saw. You mustn’t worry.”

I motioned him to a chair, lit a lamp, and brought towels, a healing salve, and a linen bandage I kept in a drawer, and then set to cleaning the wound myself. “Not worry? Better ask me not to breathe. The law of Leire is— Stars of night, Karon, you were a prisoner!” I held his hand up to the light, my skin crawling at seeing the rope burns on his wrists.

“This was thieves, not the law. They saw my heavy cloak and my decent horse and thought I might fetch a good ransom. It was quite clear there was nothing extraordinary about my skill in avoiding them,” he said, grimacing as I tightened the bandage about his middle. “And since I can’t heal myself, they had no cause to suspect me of anything else.”

“And how did you get away?”

“Well, they had to sleep, and I was able to conjure myself out of their ropes, leaving them only the most convincing evidence that I’d got hold of a knife and cut myself free.” He stroked my hair. “It could happen to any traveler at any time, you know. I was just able to get out of it easier.”

I jerked my head away from his hand and dumped the bloody water into the waste jar. “You live in Leire, not Valleor. You must wear a sword from now on,” I said. “No Leiran noble would ever walk the street without a weapon, much less travel that way. You might as well ride naked.”

“I cannot.”

I gaped at him uncomprehending. “Cannot…” My father and mother, my brother, everyone I knew, both male and female, and I, too, lived by the sword. I’d known how to wield a blade since I was ten, prepared to use any weapon to defend myself and those I loved. The brocade knife sheath strapped to my thigh was never empty. “Well, then”—I scarcely knew what to say—“you don’t have to use it, only look as if you are capable.”

“Oh, I’m quite capable. I was trained just as any youth. But I gave up carrying a sword when I realized I could never use it. I’m a Healer, Seri. How could I?”

I could think of several points of debate, but I had already learned that Karon’s deepest-held beliefs were immune to reasoned argument. “There lives no more stubborn beast than a man of conviction,” Martin had once told me. Karon took me in his arms, and we said no more about it, but I never again rested easy when he was away.

As the months passed, Karon taught me more of sorcery and the life of the J’Ettanne in Avonar. There was no day he could remember, he told me, when he could not do things I would call magic: to light a candle with the brush of his mind, to make a rose bloom from a dormant shrub, to call a bird to sit on his hand. And on every one of those days he knew he could be burned for it. It was as if I had grown up knowing I could be executed because my heart was beating.

In Karon’s youth, several hundred of the J’Ettanne had lived in Avonar. They had learned through hard generations how to live a dual life, to suppress their talent until they were in safety or to use it so subtly that no one would ever know. They were merciless with their children, he said, for it was the only way to keep them safe. Whenever a sorcerer was taken, seven of the J’Ettanne, always two of them children, would stand in the command of Montevial or the Imperial Amphitheater in Vanesta and watch while their friend or kinsman burned—so they would never forget.

But the children were also taught the skills and the love of life that were bound up with their heritage. Never did they deny who they were or reject the difficult course laid out for them. Never was there any suggestion that they forsake their Two Tenets and revert to the practices of their foolish ancestors. Many J’Ettanne became quite facile at using their talents. The ordinary citizens of Avonar never suspected that the reputation of their city for having the most exceptionally beautiful gardens and fountains and the most skilled craftsmen in all of Valleor rested in large part on the community of sorcerers that lived among them.

“Of course, our life was happy,” Karon told me one evening as we worked in our own tiny garden, tucked away behind the townhouse. “Quite happy. There were always ‘aunts and uncles’ to care for you and to listen when you were troubled. And we weren’t isolated from the rest of the children in the city. We couldn’t be or it would be noticed. We just learned how to manage it.”

“Could everyone do the same things you do? Heal, I mean. Tame birds. Make light.”

“Basic things, yes, like the candles and the birds. But it wasn’t until age sixteen or so that your primary talent would manifest itself. A bit terrifying when it happened. You would go to sleep as a modestly capable boy or girl, plagued with the normal confusions of being neither child nor adult, and then awaken the next day as a Gardener or a Builder or a Metalwright or a Healer. There were those who could melt silver without fire and shape it into marvelous creations with only their minds. There were the Speakers—not many, as truth-telling was always a rare gift—and there were the Word Winders and the Singers. My mother was a Singer. When she sang, the image of her words was brought to life right in the room with you, not just in your mind, but a shimmering vision in the air before you, alive with color and motion. When she sang you to sleep, you would dream her songs.”

I shoved a stick-like tree into the hole Karon had dug and wished I had some magic to make it grow faster, so that it would shade this corner of my garden before I had white hair. Some days, my own life felt truly useless. “What of you then?” I asked, pounding the dirt about the tree to hold it straight. “When did you discover you were a Healer?”

“I was seventeen. All that summer I had lived with the growing fear that I had no talent beyond the ordinary, that the Way would never be laid down for me. On rare occasion that would happen. No one knew why. One day my brother Christophe and I were out tramping in the mountains. He was just thirteen and very much determined to show he was my equal in climbing. We were hoping to find a new route to the top of Mount Karylis that day, but had begun to think it impossible. Then Christophe found a narrow chimney that looked to reach a ledge we’d been trying for, and before I could discourage him, he was up it. He fell, and… well, the details aren’t important. He landed on a rock and caved in his chest. There was no one to help—no one within two hours’ walk.”

Karon’s attention drifted into the realm of story and memory that was always as vivid as present daylight for him. “I had watched J’Ettanni Healers perform the blood-rite and prayed for years that whatever my gift, it would not be that one. But on that day my desire was reversed, and I had no choice but to try. Otherwise Christophe was dead and would cross the Verges long before I could get him home. Our people had many theories on how specific talents developed; perhaps my gift might have been different if my need had not been so great. I did what I had to do, holding Christophe close to me so the blood would mingle as it must and taking myself into him so I could put right what had been damaged. More than half a day it took me.” He laughed and squeezed my hand, returning from his journey of remembrance. “I was not very skilled and caused both of us more grief than was necessary. That scar is my constant inducement to humility.”

When I asked him, he showed me the long, ragged white mark that had been his first.

“Can you remember them all?” I ran my fingers over the tracery of white that criss-crossed his left arm. Hundreds of scars.

“Every one. You cannot forget. The sense of completion… of purpose… of wholeness… is indescribable. There’s been nothing in my life to compare to it… until I met you.”

And then were both talking and gardening interrupted for a while.

Later, as we walked into the house in the moonlight, I asked him what he meant by “crossing the Verges.” He wrinkled his brow and said, “Nothing in Leiran cosmology corresponds to the concept. The J’Ettanne call the place where souls reside after death L’Tiere, the ”following life.“ We know nothing of its nature, but we believe that between the life that we know and L’Tiere, there exists a boundary which the living cannot cross and from which there is no return. After death there is a time—from a few moments to a few hours—when the soul has not yet crossed this boundary and can be returned to the body. It’s why time is so critical to a Healer. With skill and effort and luck and the gift I have been given, I can return one who is dead to life again, but only if the soul has not yet crossed.”

I was fascinated by all this, but uncomfortable, too. Death was rarely a topic of discussion in Leiran society. Warriors lived forever in legend and story, of course, and the Holy Twins would inscribe their names on their lists of heroes when we recounted their noble deeds in temple rites. And the families who nurtured such heroes shared in this immortality, as Mana shared in the glory of the First God Arot. Otherwise, Leiran gods had no use for the dead. Living a life of honor was what was important.

“It was not so very different in Avonar,” Karon said, when I mentioned my discomfort. “We had a somewhat more optimistic view of whatever is to come, but Healers were never the first ones that came to mind when one was making a guest list. Reminders of mortality are never welcome.” He gave an exaggerated sigh. “I suppose now you’ll want to banish me to the kitchens when you entertain.”

“I’d already planned it so. It was your conversation that attracted me, you know, and I’m hesitant to put your social graces on display lest another woman be singed by the same flame!”

As Karon flourished in his more ordinary profession, I spent more and more time with him at the antiquities collection. Here we had no arguments, but reveled in the unending variety of human creativity. Among the bins and boxes we found man-high statues of Kerotean marble and tiny fetishes of wood and ivory from cultures so primitive that nothing at all was known of them. There were Vallorean tapestries, illuminated manuscripts, helmets and armor and swords of a thousand varieties, maps and glassware, jewelry and silverwork, rugs woven of the hair from exotic beasts. Most of these articles had been stuffed into musty vaults in the royal treasuries with no regard for their fragile nature. Armor was thrown on top of crumbling manuscripts, paintings laid face down, ivory and jade statuary left where dampness had made stagnant pools.

Shortly after assuming his post, Karon had several large, well-aired workrooms set aside for his use. He had his small staff of assistants bring each item to the workrooms, so it could be judged, and then it would either be disposed of or sent to be cleaned, repaired, and packed away more carefully.

Our delight was to find an article that was unmarked and unknown and to unravel the mysteries of its origin. We would seek some idea of its history from the pieces stored alongside it. Then we would attempt to trace the materials, the paint, the stone, the paper, the ink, the yam. Karon would search the royal libraries for references to anything similar or write letters to scholars or collectors who might have information. If we were still lacking information, I might take the piece to the market, and inquire of visiting merchants or travelers if they had ever seen such a thing.

Evard’s lord high chamberlain heard of the new commissioner’s work and sent his secretary to ask if there might be articles suitable for display in the palace. Evidently Evard had decided that some ornamentation might better suit his role as the supreme monarch of the civilized world. Perhaps his decision was connected with the rumors that the young queen considered Leirans, including her husband, to be barbarians. And so, when we found a particularly fine piece, I would write a card describing it, pack the card with the vase or statue or tapestry, and send them to the chamberlain with the commissioner’s compliments and a recommendation as to the object’s placement and method of display.

The only activity I avoided was accompanying Karon down into the vaults. I blamed my deep-rooted horror of dark, confined spaces on Tomas. Once when I was but five or six years old, I was playing hide and seek with Tomas and two of his friends through the dank cellars and musty storerooms of Comigor. Tomas decided it would be a great joke to abandon the game without telling me. He and his friends took themselves off riding, not knowing that the ancient cupboard I had discovered deep in the darkest cellar had a faulty latch and that I could not free myself. When I failed to come to supper in the nursery, the governess assumed I was out riding, too. Only when the boys returned at nightfall did the alarm go out.

It was two days until they found me, pale and terrified and perfectly quiet, huddled in the pitch-blackness of the cramped old cabinet. I had been afraid to cry out when I heard the searchers, for our old nurse had always told us that there were demons in the dark who would devour crying children to feed their sorceries. I had decided it would be better to starve than to risk such an awful fate. Years passed before I could sleep without a lamp left burning, and the fear of confinement had never left me.

The first time Karon took me into the vaults, eager to share the wonders of his treasury, I convinced myself that my childish megrims would surely be banished now I was a married woman. But as luck would have it, halfway down the ancient stairway our lamp ran out of oil, and it took no extraordinary talent for Karon to discover my terror. I almost tore the sleeve off his coat. In an instant, without regard for the risk, he conjured a light for me—a soft white glow emanating from his hand that faded only when he led me into the daylight and wrapped his arms about me to calm my shaking.

“Ah, love, you need never fear the demons again,” he said, after I’d told him the tale. “Is it not true that you have married one of them, who, now he is in your power, can well hold his fellows at bay?” It became a joke between us about the demons, and indeed I discovered that as long as Karon was with me, I could survive a venture to the vaults. Only rarely did I go, however, and I always checked the lamp oil carefully.

It was while delving into the crates of booty hauled from Valleor after its conquest that Karon came across a legacy from his ancestors. One summer afternoon, I came to Karon’s workroom as I did several times a week to help sort and number the artifacts. I had suggested a cataloging scheme, so we could have a record not only of what was stored in the vaults, but also where each item was located and what other items might be related to it.

On this particular day I was recording a description of a crate of mouse-chewed books, a set of erotic stories written and illustrated by a Kerotean noble for his bride. I was hoping the woman had possessed a strong stomach and an exotic sense of humor. Karon appeared in the workroom doorway, and I waved a greeting, but he didn’t seem to notice me. He was dusty and disheveled, not an unusual state when he’d been working in the vaults, but the expression on his face was his “storytelling” look, as if, despite his body being in the room, he traveled in some faraway place. Where ordinarily he would see fourteen things needing his attention, he seemed at a loss.

I left my list with a workman and threaded my way through the workroom clutter. “Karon, what is it? Have bodies come popping out of your rusty armor?”

His eyes caught mine for a moment. “Yes… well… in a way.”

A young man, whose nose, mouth, and chin came to such a sharp prominence as to be vaguely reminiscent of a rat, called out from across the room. “Lord Commissioner, should I discard this helm? It’s quite ordinary—Leiran, and not even a very nice one. I think it must have belonged to the fellow who collected this lot.” Racine had been the secretary for the previous Commissioner of Antiquities, but had been required to do little more than carry notes to the man’s mistress. Karon was pleased with Racine’s keen interest in the new procedures and how quickly the eager assistant’s eye had become discriminating.

“Whatever you think, Racine.” Brought out of his distraction a bit by the exchange, Karon spoke quietly to me. “Can you come? I’d like to show you. I don’t know what to do with it.”

“Of course.”

Karon told Racine to carry on and led me to the steep, winding stair. “We have to go down. Will you be all right?”

“I’ll manage,” I said, touching his hand and remembering his magical fight. “My demon is with me.”

He took me deep into the far corner of the vault to a pile of rolled carpets. Setting the lamp on a nearby crate, he dragged a cracked leather trunk from underneath the pile. The trunk was full of old clothes. From deep beneath the jumble of faded silks and satins he pulled out a flat, wooden box. The wood was polished dark and smooth by years of handling, the plain brass hinges and latch tarnished. Karon raised the lid and reverently removed the contents, one by one.

First, a silver knife, the finger-length blade and curved, ornately worked handle black with tarnish. Next a threadbare strip of cloth, a scarf or sash perhaps, more like a spiderweb that threatened to dissolve at a touch. Then a round, button-like piece, also made of silver, blackened by time. Karon laid each thing in my lap, and I could not mistake the wonder in his eyes.

“They’re not very old by the standards of many things in the collection,” he said, “but they’re quite rare.”

“What are they?”

“Tools. The tools of a J’Ettanni Healer. One can use things that were originally designed for other purposes, as I do when I work, but there was a time… well, the custom was to have your own tools always ready: a knife of silver, cast with your own proper enchantments to keep it keen-edged—there is no way to make that part of it easy or pleasant, but a sharp knife is always better than dull—and a strip of white linen for the binding—it’s dangerous to lose contact in the middle of the rite, as I’ve told you. You can get dizzy. And in this”—he showed me how the button was actually a tiny cup with a hinged lid—“you would keep indiat, a paste made from herbs, quite rare and expensive, but it would ease the pain of the incision for the one you were to heal. The rite can be very hard, especially for children.”

As always, I had a hundred questions but I wasn’t sure he would even hear me.

“It’s incredible enough to find these things, but they’re not all.” From the wooden box he pulled a small book, hardly bigger than his hand. Its leather cover was half rotted away, the stitching gone, leaving it little but a stack of pages of precarious thinness. Faded ink filled the pages, words of a language I didn’t recognize written in a bold hand.

“The Healer’s journal,” said Karon. “See the symbol of the knife on the front. And here”—with utmost care, he opened to the front of the little book—“a list of names and places, and what I think must be a description of the circumstances for each healing he did. It’s written in the old language of the J’Ettanne, which went out of use long before bound books. I know so little of the language, it’s hard to read it. But look at this entry.” His face was that of a child on Long Night. “Garlao, the miller. Mycenar — that must be the village—hand caught in —something. J’dente means healed. It’s so important for a Healer to remember. There are times when it’s not right to change the outcome, times when death is not an enemy to be thwarted, times when sickness must be left to burn itself out, and so you must constantly look back at the judgments you’ve made to see if your course is straight. This man did it this way.” Karon’s whole posture begged me to understand what it meant to him to find these things. He believed he was the last living soul of his own kind.

“It’s a connection both to all those who came before you and to one particular man who was a Healer like yourself.”

“And even more than that. You see, he’s marked the book into days. Some are skipped; some are just noted by a symbol.” He turned the delicate pages carefully. “This one he’s marked Av’Kenat. I think the text must be a description of it… by one who was there.”

Av’Kenat was the “Walking Night,” the late autumn celebration when the ancient J’Ettanne would come together to celebrate the passing of summer, the harvest, and their belief that life was a formless essence, given shape by the crossing of our paths as each of us walked the Way laid down for us. It was a time for storytelling and family reunions, for betrothals and weddings, reunions and feasting, and magical games and displays of all kinds.

Karon’s face glowed in the lamplight. “All I’ve ever heard is legends, passed down so many times one never knew if they were true. Our people never dared join together on Av’Kenat. Only in the heart of the family could we have any celebration, and that contradicted the whole meaning of the feast. If I were to work at it, I could read of the real thing from one who witnessed it.”

“You could learn things that even your own family didn’t know.”

He nodded, but the glow was already fading, and his brow quickly settled into a frown. “But I’m required to destroy the journal and the other things. The law explicitly forbids these words, this language, any mention of these events and activities.”

“If you were not married, would you consider destroying them?”

He glanced up quickly. “Of course I would. The risk…” The flush of his cheeks spoke truer.

“How dare you use me as an excuse for cowardice! I don’t recall making any vow of safety when I married you. Nor do I recall requiring you to make any pledge to relinquish your life, your history, or any of those things that make you who you are. Besides”—I grabbed his chin and shook his frown away—“these are treasures that belong to the royal collection, and it would ill become the Commissioner of Antiquities to destroy anything in his charge.”

“Ah, Seri.” His pleasure illuminated the dim vault. “It would take me quite a while to decipher it all. What I’ve thought is that I could first transcribe it. Then I could return the book here and work at the translation as I had time.”

“Not at all efficient, Lord Commissioner. If I were to transcribe it for you, then you could begin work on the translation before the transcription is complete—tonight, if you wish.”

For the rest of the summer, I seldom came to the storehouse of antiquities. Not only did I transcribe the fragile pages onto decent paper, but I also made separate notes of word usage and combinations that appeared frequently. Karon taught me the words as we worked, and I developed the rudiments of a dictionary comprised of both words and symbols. Never had any work satisfied me so.

The Healer often wrote in symbols, many of them representing J’Ettanni talents and offices. Karon told me that in the Healer’s day it was the custom to have the device painted on the lintel of your house: the knife for the Healer, the lyre for a Singer, the bridle for the Horsemaster, and so on. “If my father had lived in those days, he would have had his own Word Winder’s spiral, as well as this one.” He was sitting at our library table, and in the margin of his page of translation, he sketched a rectangular shield with two curved lines set into it, and a stylized floweret in each of the three regions scribed by the lines. “This is the symbol of a ruler. Christophe inherited both the talent and the office from our father—”

I was standing behind him and leaned over his shoulder to look closer. “But you were older. Why was your brother to inherit?”

“Our elders had ways to discern who was gifted in that way. Perhaps they could see I had no stomach for ruling. Christophe was to be officially named my father’s heir on his twentieth birthday in the autumn Avonar was destroyed. I planned to go home for it. If the Leirans had attacked two months later, I would have been in Avonar with the rest of them.”

I tugged at his chin, forcing him to look at me. “But you were not—for which I bless the hand of fate every hour. Does it bother you? Make you feel guilty that you weren’t there with them?”

He smiled. “No. That would not be very J’Ettanni, would it? Such was the Way that unfolded for us; we had escaped the ravages of the Leiran war for a long time as it was. But I miss them all and wish very much that they could meet you. All except Christophe.”

“And why not him?”

“Ah. He was very much closer to your age than I, and altogether more handsome and charming.”

“Impossible.”

“Every young woman in Avonar was in love with him.”

“And did they not recognize the charms of his older brother?” I took the pen from his hand and threw it on the desk, crammed the stopper in the ink bottle, and pulled him from the chair.

“Let’s say I was fortunate to meet you before you knew of my true profession. Few Healers ever married. Though you, I think, would have defied the common wisdom…”

The hunger was growing in him again. His easy laugh told me that he didn’t sense it yet, but his skin was hot, and when I wrapped my arms about his neck, I felt the quickening of his heart. I closed my eyes and drew his arms around me like a shield.