Son of Avonar

CHAPTER 16

Less than an hour after my return from the village, I led D’Natheil and Baglos onto an obscure track that led over the ridge and down into the deep forest. D’Natheil rode as I knew he would, as if he’d been born in the saddle, a primitive exuberance in the man matching that of the fire-eyed chestnut. As for me, what I had told Jacopo was the truth. My blood raced as it had not in ten years, and I spent a great deal of the day marveling at what a short time it had been since Midsummer’s Day, when I’d believed I would never feel anything again.

By early afternoon we came to the crossroads at Fensbridge. At Fensbridge market Baglos traded an unmarked coin of silver for boots and sword for D’Natheil, the latter old-fashioned and dull, but decently made. The young man hefted the weapon and grunted in satisfaction, if not pleasure.

From Fensbridge you could cross the river and travel the main road south back to Dunfarrie and Grenatte or ride north to Montevial, as Rowan and I did every fall, or you could take one of several roads west into the foothills of the Dorian Wall. Straight west would lead to the high, rugged country at the base of the mountains. Our northwest route would take us through the forested, rolling borderlands all the way to the Valleor highroad, a well-traveled way across the border. Those who wished to avoid border checkpoints could leave the highroad and find innumerable secondary paths into Valleor. Karon had often used them on his private journeys, and such was my intent.

By nightfall the morning’s excitement had long dissipated. I was saddle-weary, and a day’s contemplation had convinced me that my plan had more holes than a moth-eaten cloak. I had no assurance that Ferrante was even alive, much less residing in the same ivy-covered country house where Martin had first met Karon. And I had only the most faint supposition, entirely unsupported, that Ferrante knew whether there had been more than one J’Ettanni survivor of the slaughter at Avonar. And yet, the history professor had been a close friend of Karon’s father, the one person outside of Avonar that any of the sorcerers would go to for help. I hoped he would tell me what I needed to know without my having to recount Baglos’s fragmented stories of Heirs and enchanted bridges.

We camped for the night in dense forest. The air was humid and still, smelling of old leaves and moldy earth. We would see rain before morning. D’Natheil worked at sharpening and polishing the battered sword. After some rapid speech and hand gestures from Baglos, the Prince began to run two fingers over the weapon slowly, touching every part of the dully glowing surface. I believed enchantment flowed from his touch.

Watching the Prince intently, the Dulcé retreated to the log where I sat by the fire. I leaned toward him and whispered, “What’s he doing?”

Baglos jumped, as if he had forgotten I was there. “Oh, I told him—It’s just—to keep its edge and strengthen it… to enable it to serve him, a Dar’Nethi warrior can give a weapon his blessing. He has lived his whole life with swords,” he said softly, “and wielded them as a man when he was scarce taller than the weapon. But never before has he managed to do this. It was said that he would try too hard, get angry, and stop before he could get the rhythm of it. Now… I’m not sure he understands what he does.” After a while, Baglos sighed and set about cleaning up the supper things and laying out D’Natheil’s blanket.

The night passed undisturbed for the most part. In the middling hours of the night, I woke from dreams of suffocation to an unsettling scent of cold ash. But after an hour of anxious watching, I was convinced that it was only the result of our own fire being doused by the onset of the rain. We were well away from Dunfarrie and safe under the trees.

Over the next few days we traveled into the cooler hill country that bordered Valleor. As we rode through thick forests of dripping pines and birches, and between rocks covered with thick green moss, a constant drizzle seeped through the collars of our cloaks and the seams of our boots, leaving us as wet and miserable as if we’d been caught in a deluge. Baglos pestered me with questions: about the Four Realms, about the forest, about politics and trade, clothing and geography, weather and cooking and growing vegetables. Everything was which and where and how and why, why, why. Half a day of this and I was ready to scream. When I asked, “Could we not speak of something less trivial?” he began asking me about Karon and the life of the J’Ettanne. For example, was not it a sore trial for a Dar’Nethi to be wed to a mundane?

“My husband and my life are my private business, Baglos. Do you understand the word private?” I had given Baglos and D’Natheil my sustenance, my peace, such as it was, and my safety. They would get no more from me.

In deference to my ill humor, Baglos shifted his attention to D’Natheil and spent the afternoon speaking exclusively in his own language. I rode behind them, pronouncing my relief at being left alone. But two hours of unintelligible monologue did nothing to improve my irritation. When I asked the Dulcé what he was telling D’Natheil, he said that he was describing royal Avonar, its people, and things he knew of D’Natheil’s childhood, hoping to prod his young master’s memory. I hinted that I could use such information as well. But the Dulcé found the constant translation too awkward to keep up, so I was abandoned once again to my own thoughts. Annoying. As seemed to be my experience of late, what I asked for was not necessarily what I wanted.

On the next day, when the whole sequence repeated itself, I asked Baglos if he would teach me something of the Dar’Nethi tongue. To my satisfaction I picked up a few words quite readily. As I demonstrated the first results of my lessons, D’Natheil seemed pleased and motioned insistently to Baglos to teach me more.

When we camped that night, D’Natheil went through his martial exercises again, but this time with his sword. I had grown up surrounded by soldiers, but never had I seen anyone move with such grace or such ferocious intensity. He would make even Tomas look like a newly vested squire.

Near midday on the fifth day of our journey we came to a good-sized town called Glyenna. It was market day, a drab, colorless affair, where the animals were sickly and the wares of the poorest and most utilitarian kind. The sour-faced crowds milled about the poor display as if they had been sentenced to attend as punishment for the sin of cheerfulness. We planned to stay only long enough to fill waterskins and buy food, though Baglos had shown himself an incessant conversationalist at every stop and seemed to enjoy nothing more than coaxing information about anything and everything from anyone he could get to speak to him. But as I paid a peasant woman for our supplies, I caught a glimpse of a sandy-haired horseman in vehement discourse with a man wearing the colorful badge of a local constable. Rowan! The still, heavy morning suddenly closed in. I backed away, turned, and ran.

D’Natheil had stopped to gawk at a cockfight, and when I touched his sleeve, he growled and slapped my hand away, craning his neck to see better. As always, Baglos was gabbling with the raucous onlookers about why and how they watched such things and what kinds of fowl were best to use and all manner of useless information. Despite my whispered warning, I had to drag the reluctant pair away from the bloody, vulgar spectacle, watching for the sheriff as I led them through the crowd.

We were almost to the edge of the marketplace when a disturbance broke out just behind me. I looked over my shoulder, and, to my dismay, D’Natheil was sitting atop a filthy, ragged man. He had the man’s head dragged backward into an impossible angle and his dagger poised at the man’s bared throat. Two burly townsmen hung on to D’Natheil’s arm, a temporary reprieve for the squirming, whimpering victim. Baglos was babbling at the Prince and trying to pull him away.

“It’s just Hekko, the beggar,” shouted an old woman. “Meant no harm. Didn’t take nothing.”

A tradesman in a leather apron bawled for someone to bring the constable, as Hekko had been trying to steal the stranger’s silver dagger. More townspeople were gathering by the moment.

With a ferocious bellow, a powerful wrench of his shoulders, and a backhand sweep, D’Natheil dislodged his restraints, sending the two men and Baglos sprawling. His knife flashed toward the beggar’s throat.

“No!” I yelled, lunging toward him and grabbing his knife arm with both of my hands. “By the stars, you must not.” Though I had not the least faith that he could hear my angry remonstrance over the uproar, and my physical strength was surely no more threat than that of a child, the mad fire in D’Natheil’s eyes faded instantly into bewilderment. He loosened his grip on the moaning beggar and allowed Baglos and me to drag him away.

“He’s been to the war,” I said to the grumbling men pressing close as I shoved the Prince toward our horses. “It’s left him high-strung… touchy… you understand.” I jerked my head at Baglos, who pulled out a copper and tossed it to the bruised and shaken beggar. While the old woman continued her screeching, and two ragged boys inexpertly tried to pick my pockets, the rest of the onlookers nodded and shrugged and murmured about the war. By the time we were mounted, the crowd had begun to disperse. “Wait! Stop those three!” Over my shoulder I glimpsed Graeme Rowan struggling to get to us through the milling throng.

“Go!” I screamed, and we kicked our horses to life, leaving the bewildered citizens gaping.

We raced westward along the heavily wooded road, not slowing until the night was so dark we dared not risk the horses. We had left Glyenna a considerable distance behind, but I insisted that we walk another half a league into the thick trees before stopping. What a spectacle we had made of ourselves! My fury at D’Natheil’s folly had not cooled by the time we made camp.

“You will tell him exactly what I say,” I commanded Baglos as we unsaddled our horses in a high, rocky grotto. “Some things other than sorcery are frowned upon in Leire, at least among people of rational mind. To attack a beggar is the act of a coward, and to call attention to yourself in such a way is utterly stupid. Our lives are at risk because of your childishness. You will control yourself if you want any more help from me. Do you understand?” D’Natheil, his face blazing, turned his back on me. Baglos tried to smooth it over. “Madam, you must understand that D’Natheil has been trained as a warrior since he could walk. He is considered to be one of the finest—”

“That’s no excuse.” Annoying little twit. I wanted to strangle him and his master both. “It’s quite possible to control one’s reactions, no matter how finely honed. Warriors should be somewhat larger of mind than animals. Tell him that, too. Exactly as I said it.”

Baglos paled, but did as I asked, speaking softly to his master’s rigid back. The silence was long and awkward as we made our camp. D’Natheil threw his pack to the ground and kicked away the rocks that lay where he planned to make his bed. He kept to himself for the rest of the night.

With Rowan so close on our trail, I made sure we were on the road early and took extra care that we were not observed by any other travelers. Whenever I sought information about roads, I asked about Vanesta or Prydina, relying on my own geography skills to set us right and hoping that the sheriff would follow the wrong path. I considered taking the wrong direction for a while, and then looping around in hopes of throwing off pursuit, but I dared not delay. If Rowan was in company with the sorcerer Zhid, they might be able to follow us anywhere.

The journey would have been dismal even without the close pursuit and the rainy weather. The border villages had suffered the most in the years of the Vallorean War, and in few of the rotting settlements that were still occupied were there any men at all between the ages of thirty and sixty. Strangers, especially sturdy young men of military age, were regarded with scarcely controlled hostility, and only grudgingly were we allowed to avail ourselves of food supplies.

As stiffness and saddle sores took their toll alongside the discomforts of constant rain, cold food, and sleeping on hard ground, I thought regretfully of my childhood when Papa would take Tomas and me on three-day riding excursions to see the site of his grandfather’s victory over Vallorean raiders or the hill where legend said that Annadis spent his vigil night before being named Arot’s successor. Twelve hours a day in the saddle had seemed life’s ultimate delight. My brother and I would sleep with the horses and dogs while Papa’s soldiers cooked, told stories, and stood watch for wolves. Rain just made our treks more adventurous. What dreary tricks fate can play on us.

After Glyenna, D’Natheil refused to engage in any conversation. He rode, he ate, and he brooded, and when we stopped at night, he practiced his swordwork and took his share of the watch. The Dulcé was anxious to pursue his teaching further but had learned not to press. His master’s anger was quick and heavy, though, in truth, D’Natheil’s withdrawal seemed to restrain his intemperate hand along with everything else. After a few days, Baglos might have welcomed a blow just as evidence D’Natheil was listening to him at all.

“Was D’Natheil always so changeable?” I asked Baglos one night when the Prince had disappeared yet again as soon as he had eaten his share of the night’s meager fare. “On one day I’m sure he’s going to put a knife in me as I sleep. The next, I could be the muck on his horse’s shoe for all he cares. And then… well, before I yelled at him… he would surprise me with one of those smiles, and I’d think he was going to ask me to dance.”

Baglos was scraping the last of the boiled turnip from the bottom of our cooking pot. “In addition to physical strength, intelligence, and extraordinary power, the family of D’Arnath has always been blessed with those amiable qualities which allow men to lead others in difficult times. In the matter of aggressive temper”—he glanced over his shoulder at the empty clearing—“they have been variously gifted… or afflicted as one might view it. As you see, D’Natheil was born with a full measure. When he was eleven, D’Natheil had a swordmaster who was quite serious about his task and rigorous in his discipline. D’Natheil scorned him, complaining that his skills were inferior, and grew increasingly impatient that no better master was brought in. One day the master was found dead in the sparring arena from a sword wound in his belly. D’Natheil claimed it was an accident in their practice, simple proof of his contention that the man was unfit to be his tutor. No one witnessed the incident, and nothing more was said. But I’ve heard the man was hamstrung.”

On the afternoon of the seventh day we dropped down into the high plains of eastern Valleor. Southward, to our left, soared the peaks of the Dorian Wall, needle-sharp spires piercing the heavy clouds. To the far west a lesser range called the Vallorean Spine split Valleor down the middle, and before us and stretching far to our right lay the valley of the Uker River, endless vistas of gentle hills and lakes, dotted with the darker green of patchy forests, eventually rising into craggy highlands many leagues to the north. It was beautiful country, the fertile heart of gentle Valleor, on that day pooled with fogs and mists.

King Gevron had raped the fields of Valleor, stripping them bare to feed his armies and then slaughtering any who tried to work them. Now, anything grown in the Uker valley must be shipped instantly to Leire. Only then could it be purchased, properly taxed and at highly elevated prices, for distribution in the subjugated land. The starving Valloreans had to watch as heavily laden grain wagons rolled past their villages, and never did they see even one-tenth of their land’s bounty returned to them.

Three more days brought us to Yurevan, the oldest city in Valleor, and Ferrante’s house, Verdillon, some half a league outside the city walls. The professor was the second son of a Vallorean count. Though unable to inherit the title or lands, he’d had a decent enough portion to escape the poverty of most University dons. As it turned out, his had been the luckier inheritance, for his brother the count had been hanged and the family’s traditional holdings confiscated after Gevron’s victory.

I managed to find the proper road, and my heart thumped a bit when I caught sight of the stone walls, thickly covered with vines of lush green. The gate was standing open when we arrived, and the grounds were as I remembered from my single visit long ago: sprawling cherry orchards, roses of a hundred varieties, spreading carpets of green grass. The gravel carriage road wound through the lovely parkland to a classic beauty of a country house.

The day was inordinately quiet, no sound of groom or gardener, dog or bird. Perhaps the heavy mist rolling in from the forest had deadened the noise on what should be a normally active day about the property. When we reached the flagstone courtyard before the front door, I dismounted and rang the bell. Ferrante had to be there. To have come so far to find only strangers would be too cruel.

D’Natheil stepped past me and pushed on the massive doors. They swung open easily. Wariness and foreboding shadowed his face, quieting my protest. The foyer was just as I remembered: highly polished oak floor, graceful, curving staircase, the display case still holding Ferrante’s greatest treasure, a thousand-year-old brass bowl dug up from the tombs at Doria. The air smelled of the cut roses that stood in every nook and the cleaning oil used on the dark mahogany tables.

“Hello!” My greeting seemed muted by the richly colored tapestries hung on the dark wood paneling. No lamps were lit to chase away the gloom of the afternoon. Bustling servants should have been taking our sodden cloaks and wiping our damp footprints off the fine floor, but no one came.

“Professor Ferrante? Is anyone here?”

Baglos whispered anxiously, “Perhaps we should go, woman. Though your rank would permit it, we do not look like we belong here, coming in the front door.”

Something was certainly amiss. D’Natheil could sense it, too. I started up the stairs toward Ferrante’s study on the second floor. “Hello,” I called again. “Professor?”

When we reached the upper gallery, D’Natheil pointed inquiringly at a pair of satiny walnut doors. I nodded. Quietly and carefully, the young man pushed open the door and led the three of us into the professor’s study.

Tall, paned windows welcomed the gray afternoon into the book-lined room, revealing the comfortable furnishings of thick rugs, brass lamps, and deep chairs. Professor Ferrante sat at his wide desk, but the brilliant, gentlemanly scholar would never again answer anyone’s questions. The front of his gray morning gown was drenched in blood, and his eyes gazed out at us, fixed in a horrified stare.

My skin crept. “We need to leave,” I said.

“I don’t think so,” said a man’s voice from behind me. I whirled about to see Baglos’s eyes bulging. A long, thin arm was wrapped about the Dulcé‘s throat, and the point of a knife was poised at his belly. The hand that held the knife was shaking, but there was no mistaking its intent. The owner of the arm and the voice was obscured by the shadows behind the door. “Have you come back to review your handiwork? Pull down your hoods. Let me see those who would so foully murder a man of peace and intellect in his own home.” Anger and grief left the man’s voice hoarse. “Do it now—before I skewer this one!”

As I lowered the sodden hood of my cloak, ready to proclaim our innocence, I heard a sharp intake of breath. “Seri!” Baglos stumbled to the side, the knife fell to the carpet, and from the shadows stepped a bespectacled man, thin and slightly stooped, gray at the temples with creases at the eyes from too many years reading in dim light. A graying goatee lengthened his narrow face, causing a moment’s uncertainty before I recognized him. Then a small eternity of disbelief passed before I could convince my lips to say his name. “Tennice!”

In movements so swift one could see only the result, D’Natheil’s sword was drawn and touching Tennice’s belly. pressing him to the wall.

“D’Natheil, no!” I cried. “Baglos, tell him no. This is my friend… a friend who’s come back from the dead.”

Baglos spoke quietly and insistently to D’Natheil. After a long moment, the cold-eyed young man released Tennice, but he did not sheathe his weapon.

“Is it really you, Seri?” Once it appeared that he was not going to be spitted on D’Natheil’s weapon, the ghost lowered his hands and touched my cheek with his cold, but quite substantial fingers.

“He heard you die,” I whispered. “They made him listen. All of you were dead.” Now I was shaking. Dead was dead.

“And so I was or so close as to be thought so. I can tell you what happened and must hear the same from you, but first”—he turned to the grisly scene in the library and ran his fingers through his thin hair—“I’ve got to take care of Ferrante.”

“What happened here?”

“I’ve been in Vanesta for several days, searching for a book for Ferrante. An hour ago I rode in and passed four strangers on the service road behind the house. I thought nothing of it. Students are in and out all the time. But no servants were about, no grooms in the stable, and then I came up and found… this. When I heard your call, I thought you must be students or tradesmen. But when I stepped out and spied you coming up the stairs, I thought the murderers had come back. Who would do this to him? They didn’t even steal anything!”

This murder left me with a horrid, creeping sickness… a sensation well beyond that caused by the vile deed itself. I glanced at Baglos and D’Natheil, then down at my own soggy cloak, and my revulsion took on more substance. “What made you believe we were the murderers?”

“Your long cloaks, I suppose, and the colors. Two of those I saw riding away wore gray, one of them black. Like you, they had their hoods up, so I couldn’t see—”

Baglos caught the connection. “Great Vasrin, the Zhid! It’s a trap. We must be out of here!” He was already out of the library door, dragging D’Natheil like a fierce sheepdog, bullying his charge away from the wolf’s lair.

“What’s he saying?” said a bewildered Tennice.

“We’ve no time to explain. We must go, and you must come with us.”

“I can’t leave him this way. I have to notify someone… the University… his friends.”

I grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the door. “Please, Tennice. You mustn’t be here if the killers return. You can’t do Ferrante any good.”

Reluctantly, my friend allowed me to drag him down the stairs. D’Natheil listened carefully at the front door, then motioned us to stay back. Watchers, he gestured. Our horses nickered restlessly. A quick exchange of words and gestures between Baglos and D’Natheil, and the Dulcé announced that D’Natheil would fetch the horses and take them around the back. The rest of us should meet him… where?

“Tennice, does the blacksmith’s shed still link the kitchen garden and the stable?” I asked. He confirmed it. “Baglos, tell D’Natheil that the stable is just past the carriage house east of the kitchen garden. We’ll meet him there. And tell him he can fight today.”

Baglos translated, and D’Natheil nodded. He put his hands up to raise his hood, and, for the first time in a fortnight, he smiled, the piercing brilliance of it reflected in his marvelous eyes. For that single moment, my fear vanished, and all the annoyance of the journey was forgotten. Then he disappeared into the back of the house.

From a window that opened onto the courtyard, we watched D’Natheil slog slowly around the corner of the house from the direction of the stables. He looked shorter, bent in the back, and had acquired a slight limp. He untethered our horses and led them back toward the corner of the house, as if he were taking them to the stable to stay the night. No hurry. No hesitation. Melting into the scene every bit as much as the paving stones or the dead leaves heaped in the corners of the courtyard. It was difficult to focus on him. One’s eyes kept slipping off into the background.

“Who is he?” whispered Tennice. “One would almost think…”

I thought I glimpsed movement in the shrubbery beyond the courtyard, but the harder I stared, the less I saw, and finally I forced myself to look away. “I’ll tell you about him once we’re safe. Now it’s our turn.”

Tennice threw on his cloak and led us through the dark, silent passageways and the deserted kitchen into the kitchen garden. We crept through the muddy garden, hugging the high stone wall, and slipped through an iron gate that led to the blacksmith’s shed. The dark enclosure smelled of coal and ashes and cold dirt floor. Carefully, Tennice cracked the wooden door that opened onto the stableyard, and we peered out. Far across the yard the stooped figure shambled toward us, leading our horses. Tennice whispered that he would meet us in the stableyard, and then he vanished into the adjoining stable. I was beginning to think our elaborate precautions foolish when a gray-robed figure stepped out of the rainy gloom behind D’Natheil.

“You! You with the horses. Who are you? All the servants were dismissed today.” D’Natheil didn’t stop, but he didn’t hurry either. Every sense was screaming at me to run out of the shed and get away. But D’Natheil was still too far away.

“You! Come here!” The voice was cold, like jaws of ice gnawing at the heart.

D’Natheil paused and looked around as if he had all the time until world’s end. He waved at the hooded figure and continued on his way to the stable, limping slowly. When the Prince was some twenty paces from the stable, the gray-robed man started running. I needed no signal. I thumped Baglos on the shoulder, and we burst from the shed. D’Natheil snatched me off my feet and catapulted me into the saddle, then did the same for the Duke. The man in gray attacked D’Natheil before the Prince could mount his own steed, but D’Natheil raised his arm and backhanded him. The gray-robed man staggered backwards. Two rough-looking men in leather jerkins appeared from the front of the house and ran toward us, swords drawn. D’Natheil drew his own sword and ran one of them through in a single motion. The second, he upended with a blow so hard, the man’s jaw cracked like dry wood. Two more men leaped out of the bushes.

As D’Natheil threw himself onto the chestnut, shouts rang out from several directions. Tennice shot from the stable astride a fine-boned bay, crying, “This way!” We raced down the carriage road, following him through the wet fields and gardens.

At least three horsemen gave chase. Whisperings of horror teased at my back: might as well stop now… the race is over… you’ll never elude them… Tennice moaned and pulled up on his reins, and Baglos, too, began to slow, but D’Natheil roared and slashed at our horses, and the four of us thundered down the road and through the back gate of Verdillon. Beyond the park boundaries Tennice led us off the road and into the thicker trees, and more quickly than we could have hoped, our pursuers and their creeping horrors had vanished. We pushed on, not daring to stop too soon, scarcely able to see through the rain and the failing light. Raindrops stung our faces and soaked our clothes.

At last Tennice pulled up somewhere deep in the forest. He gave me a hand down from the lathered roan and kicked open the door of a squat hut made of poorly joined logs. “We lost them, I think,” he said, urging me through the doorway. “No one knows about this place.”

Baglos tethered the horses on the lee side of the hut. While Tennice and I carried our packs inside, the Dulcé and the Prince tended the beasts, rubbing them down with a blanket Tennice had used for a saddle. Before long, Baglos joined us in the hut.

Shivering, the Dulcé and I pulled out blankets and what little we had that was dry, sharing with Tennice. After a brief glance inside, D’Natheil remained standing in the doorway, staring out into the rain, one hand peeling strips of soft wood from the rotted facing. When Baglos offered him a plain silver flask pulled from the leather bag he always carried over his shoulder, he shoved the Dulcé away and stepped outside, striding across the soggy clearing to a low brick wall, part of the abandoned charcoal oven. He perched sideways on the wall, drew up his knees, and rested his head on them, letting the cold rain pour over his head and back.

For myself, I appreciated Baglos’s offering. The potent, sweet wine left a trail of fire down my throat.

Tennice broke the tired silence. “And now can someone explain all this to me?”

“I can try,” I said. “If you’ve no wish to be… involved… I couldn’t blame you.”

“I’ve just left my friend and employer wallowing in his own blood, and I’ve been pursued through the forest by those who make me feel like someone else is living in my skin. And in the midst of it all appears a woman I believed ten years dead, who happens to be in the company of two most unusual strangers. Not likely I can just leave it.”

“The ones who murdered Ferrante are called Zhid,” I said, as I tried to get my thin, damp blanket to make a double layer around my cold feet. “They, as well as my two friends here, come from… someplace else. I’m not sure where. Clearly you’ve guessed some of this as you watched D’Natheil—that surly one who prefers the rain to our company. I seem to have gotten myself mixed up with sorcerers again.”

“I knew it…”

I told him how D’Natheil had come to me, and the evidence that led me to believe that it was not by chance. “… and so, even though for the past ten years I believed myself as dead as the rest of you, I have now been selected, coerced, or summoned to play nursemaid to a mute, half-wild princeling who can scarcely remember his own name. And this other one—the good Baglos—says he’s been appointed as D’Natheil’s ‘Guide,” but he knows nothing of where he is to guide him, and cannot tell me where their home lies, and in fact knows very little unless his master bids him. And somehow D’Natheil must remember how he is supposed to go about saving the world.“

“This makes no sense.”

“Absolutely correct. I’ll confess that it’s more than a little unnerving to listen to these two and attempt to find some logical conclusion to it.”

Even Tennice’s puzzled expression could not persuade me to voice the absurd speculation that had been running around the back of my head for the past few days. Where had D’Natheil and Baglos come from? From a land called Gondai that appeared on no map I had ever seen in my father’s vast collection of maps, nine tenths of it laid waste embroiled in a war that had lasted a thousand years. From an Avonar that was not Karon’s Avonar, but far older, a city of sorcerers. Across an enchanted bridge that connected Gondai to a land with no sorcery, a land that the people of D’Natheil’s Avonar considered exile. We in the Four Realms were indeed turned inward, giving scant attention to the vast reaches of the world beyond our borders. But how could such places exist and our people not know of them? Enchantment… sorcery… another place…

Tennice took a long pull at one of our wineskins. “Who are these Zhid? And what does Ferrante have to do with any of this?”

“From what I understand, the Zhid are the ancient enemies of D’Natheil’s people… Karon’s people. And Ferrante—” I puzzled over it again, the intricacy of the puzzle distracting me from my unnerving ideas. “Baglos claims he is unable to explain more than I’ve already told you, and that D’Natheil is the one who must explain their mission. And he says that D’Natheil’s condition—his inability to speak and his loss of memory—is certainly new. And so I decided that the only hope to discover what’s locked inside D’Natheil’s head is to find someone to read what’s there in the way Karon could.”

“But Ferrante was no sorcerer.”

“Another of the J’Ettanne could do it.”

With every justification, Tennice stared at me as if I’d gone berserk. “They’re all dead, Seri.”

“Are they? When Karon first went to the University, his father told him that in time of trouble he should go to Ferrante, that Ferrante was the only person outside their community who could be trusted implicitly, that he was sworn by the most sacred of oaths never to reveal a J’Ettanne to anyone. Ever. In that last autumn before he was arrested, Karon began to wonder if perhaps the professor was unable to tell him the truth, that Ferrante took his oath so seriously that he wouldn’t even reveal one J’Ettanne to another. He never had the opportunity to confront Ferrante with his theory.”

Tennice’s eyes had grown wide as I said this, and when I paused, he spoke in quiet excitement. “The list of those who are left…”

“What?”

“I can’t believe it. You’re right. Karon was right. It’s so obvious now.” His eyes glittered behind his spectacles. “Ferrante had records of all the students he ever taught over the years. Hundreds of them. Under each name he would list the topics they had covered, thesis titles, research projects, and the like. He was forever asking me to find out who had done the work on the Battle of Horn’s Cavern or written a discourse on the Honneck Invasion. On one of my delving expeditions, I came across three instances of Karon’s name. Two entries were quite typical, one from his student years when he first came to Yurevan, the other from his second sojourn, when he was studying archaeology and Martin met him there. But the third entry had nothing beside it but a mark. Several other names were on that list, most with the same mark beside. I asked Ferrante about those entries, and he said only that it was ”the list of those who are left.“ Stupid me, I never understood. I’ll wager frogs to elephants, they were J’Ettanne. There’s your answer…”

“But we can’t risk going back for it.” The disappointment was crushing. To be so close…

Tennice bumped my chin with his bony knuckle. “Have you forgotten so much? Though I never had Karon’s intelligence, Martin’s wisdom, or Julia’s wit, I possessed one skill that was out of the ordinary. These cursed eyes don’t see so well as they did, but the head to which they’re attached is the same.”

“Your memory!”

“Four names were still unmarked: Lazari, Bruno, Kellea, Celine.”

“And was there any clue as to where these people might be found?”

“Not in the book. Bruno, I never ran across again, nor Celine. But until a year ago, someone named Lazari wrote often from Kallamat. And Kellea”—he looked as though he might burst. “Well, there’s an herb shop near the University—I’m not sure exactly where. But once a year, Ferrante had a little box of a rare herb sent to Verdillon to ease his old cook’s gout. He said he could get it nowhere else, but that Kellea had a gift for finding things.”

“She’s here in Yurevan!” I jumped to my feet, unable to contain my excitement though cold reason told me we could not set out right away. Even if the shop was easily found, and the woman still there, we dared not leave the forest. Night was falling. The Zhid would be seeking. Even D’Natheil had come indoors at last, settling in a corner, where he was cleaning his knife and his sword with his sodden shirt. “I wonder if this house ever held people who cared for each other in a way that would hold back the Zhid?” I said.

“I don’t know about all those who’ve lived here,” said Tennice. “But a family stayed here once. This is where Karon healed the family of plague, and where Martin watched from that window and saw what he did.”

“Here?” I pushed the shutter wide open and leaned on the damp sill of the crudely cut window. Gazing into the darkening forest, I heard Martin tell once more of the strange and poignant sight that met his eyes as he watched the young sorcerer work his magic on the dying family. Karon had been here in this room, worked his magic, given of himself. I looked afresh at the crude walls, the dirt floor, the cold firepit, the timber roof, as if somewhere in their grime and splinters might be scribed a reflection of the past, one glimpse… oh gods, one glimpse of his face. Such a dagger of grief pierced my breast at that moment that I almost cried out with it.

“He stayed with me, you know. In my head, through it all.” Tennice, sitting on the dirt floor and leaning tiredly against the wall, twirled his spectacles in his thin hands. D’Natheil watched us from his corner, where Baglos sat beside him, listening to our talk and murmuring into the Prince’s ear. “I would have lost my mind otherwise. I held onto him like one drowning, though what they did to me was nothing to what they’d done to him. After everything else they decided to finish me off with a sword. I suppose I was boring next to Martin and Julia. I told them everything I knew in the first day, said everything they wanted me to say, and signed whatever they wanted me to sign soon after. At the last I lost consciousness, believing and hoping I’d never wake again.”

He drew up his knees and rested his long arms on them. “There was a guard—he never told me his name. You know how you could never go anywhere without meeting someone who’d been one of Tanager’s ”bully comrades.“ That held true even in the foul pits of our foul king. Instead of hauling us out for the gravediggers, this man carried the two of us to an out-of-the-way cell. He cared for us as best he could and sent word to Father—”

“Tanager! Is he—?”

Tennice shook his head. “It must have taken a great deal to break him. I believe he was dead already. For certain he died long before Father’s men could retrieve us. I, for whatever reason the mad gods dreamt up, did not.”

“That’s why your father refused to claim your bodies.” For all these years I had cursed the old baron for abandoning his dead sons.

“The guard would have had to produce two corpses, and he had only one. It was weeks before I knew anything. Father told me of Karon’s death, and he tried to find out what became of you. Oh, damnation, Seri, we thought you were dead. Father was told that both you and the child were ”taken care of.“ When I recovered, I came here and never looked back. Ferrante heard that my brother Evan was killed two years ago in the war, so Father is left alone now. I daren’t write him, though. To protect him, I must be dead, too.”

“Is it your choice or his?”

“He believes it’s his, and that’s enough.”

“Be sure, Tennice.”

He glanced up, his face wrinkled into a rueful smile. “You sound like Karon. ”Everyone must choose their own danger.“ I hadn’t thought of it so… the Way of the J’Ettanne.”

My skin grew cold. What was I thinking to speak such drivel? “This has nothing to do with the Way of the J’Ettanne.” The Way of the J’Ettanne brought only death. Wasted, useless death. There was no “following life,” no greater good, and, for those of us left behind, no reprieve from the cost of such wretched, foolish idealism.

As Baglos shared out bread and apples, I told Tennice of Anne and Jonah and my life in the past ten years. The story didn’t take long. There wasn’t much else to say. We were all exhausted.

Frightful dreams plagued me that night. Each time I woke, I saw D’Natheil standing in the doorway of the hut, his unshaven face hard and fierce, lit by the traveling moon. I woke again when the sky was just beginning to lighten, and he was no longer there. He must have given in to sleep at last. But as I turned over, hoping to find a more comfortable position and wrest another hour of sleep before the day to come, I glimpsed him sitting in the shadows, his eyes fixed on me.