Son of Avonar

CHAPTER 21

“D’Arnath!” I cried out, startling myself awake, the horror of the familiar dream swept away in the moment of revelation.

Baglos looked up from the tiny, smokeless fire that crackled in the hut’s firepit. “What is it, woman?”

A few last golden arrows of the summer sunshine shot through the thick canopy of the trees and the unshuttered window of the charcoal burner’s hut. I had fallen asleep in a dim corner after my return from Yurevan, only to dream of the fire yet again. But instead of desolation, bitterness, and self-hatred, the dream left me with a confusion of feeling so intense that the sunlight felt drab and lifeless.

“Ten years ago, my husband spoke that name… How could he possibly have known it? He hadn’t heard your stories. Your history. Buried… hidden… inside him. Your dead king’s name. A word he could imbue with all his power as he died… hoping… believing… that something of meaning would come from it.” I was on my feet, pacing the room, flexing my fingers, pulling at my hair, stretching my arms to feel the sunlight as if all my appendages had been detached and were only now reconnected to my body, blood rushing into the dry, empty veins. “But I didn’t believe. I couldn’t hope, because I didn’t have the words.” D’Arnath. The king who had built the Bridge between a land of magic and a land of exile…

And as if I had pulled it from the weft of life’s weaving, a thread lay in my hand, drawn from the tangle of the past. The thread that connected past and present. A thread of enchantment and fate and purpose. I halted in mid-stride and stared at the Dulcé and the Prince with new eyes. “Stars of heaven… I know what he did!”

D’Natheil was carving on his birchwood and glanced up curiously. He motioned Baglos to his side and never took his eyes from my face as the Dulcé translated everything I’d said. Tennice, who had been standing watch, walked into the hut just in time to hear my last outburst. “Who did what, Seri?”

“My dream. All these years I’ve dreamed about the day Karon died. No matter what I did, no matter how much I willed the past to be gone, I couldn’t rid myself of that one horror. But I think it was because I never listened to what it told me, the comfort it offered if I but knew how to hear it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Nor did I until now. In all that pain and torment, Karon insisted on finding order and beauty. I never believed it. Or rather, I believed in what he found, but I never thought he accomplished anything. I heard no word of magic when he died. Our child was murdered. All of you were dead. I believed he failed, and I was so angry with him—oh, gods, for all these years I’ve been so angry with him—because he let it all happen for nothing. But I didn’t know what to listen for. Today, when I dreamed it again, I heard him say the word.”

“D’Arnath,” said Baglos, reverently.

The memories of those last dreadful days came tumbling out of me. “He found images with the word: a great chasm and a bridge. He was almost mad with pain, and I couldn’t tell what was real and what was delirium. I put it all out of my mind, because I was convinced it had no meaning and I couldn’t bear the thought. But now I know. Baglos, Karon opened your Gates, didn’t he?”

“It could very well be, woman. I wish I could tell you it was so.”

“Tell me about the day the Gates were opened.” For, of course, I had to know more. What result could possibly have been worth the price?

D’Natheil nodded to Baglos, and the Dulcé sat up straight, as he always did when telling stories of his land. “When the Gates are open, their fire burns white, and any may walk through without harm. But as they fail, the flame darkens, a fire that ravages first the spirit and then the flesh of any who attempt to pass. When the fire burns black— a fearsome sight—the Gate is impassable, and the dismal reflection of that dark fire permeates our hearts and every part of our land. And so it had been for hundreds of years.

“On that day the Zhid were attacking in a great fury, as if they thought that victory was only the next arrow away. In the fortress kitchens we were making hot soup to send out to those on the walls, for the cold winds were blowing off the Wastes. The runners thought their legs might fail from making so many trips, but they didn’t complain. Too often they would go back for the empty pots and find the one to whom they had delivered it dead or his mind stripped away in the way of the Zhid that is worse than death.”

The Dulcé transitioned smoothly from Leiran to his own language and back again. “But then came a peal of thunder, and we felt a surge of power, a storm of light and glory as if the Veils—the colored lights that grace the northern skies in summer—had descended on our hearts and infused us all with joy and hope. Though no one of us in Avonar had lived when last the Gates were open, we knew what the change signified, for there came a brilliance about every object from the most graceful tower of the palace to the least pebble underfoot, transforming the city with indescribable beauty. You could hear the warriors on the walls singing the Chant of Thanksgiving, so that your blood throbbed with it, and when night fell, no one could sleep for the singing and the talk of what the opening might mean. Would we wake to find the fire dark again? Would our young prince come to the Gate to walk the Bridge? With the strength and the light of the Gate infusing us, the Bridge strong, would we be able to push the Zhid back from the walls of the city? Would rain fall in the Wastes?” Baglos’s voice cracked and stumbled with emotion.

“In his visions Karon saw brilliant light, and he thought the bridge was singing. How did you know it was the Exiles that opened the Gates?” Prove it to me, my skeptic’s heart demanded. Convince me.

“Why, because even the Preceptors, as powerful as they are, cannot do it. Only D’Arnath’s Heirs ever had power enough to reverse the darkening of the Gate fire, and since the Battle of Ghezir, where we lost half of the Vales of Eidolon and D’Arnath’s sword, even they had not been capable. Prince D’Natheil was young and untrained and had shown no evidence of any power. We had seen no sign of the Exiles since well before the Battle of Ghezir. They had failed in their duty to walk the Bridge. But this had to be the Exiles for no one else could have accomplished it.”

For a moment, all I could envision was Karon’s Avonar and its forest of blackened pyres. Bitterness leaked into my heart. “All those years, Baglos, why didn’t your people come here and find out what happened to the Exiles? They were being slaughtered. Perhaps everything would have been different if someone had come here to see what was happening.”

“Because the Bridge was never meant to be crossed! It is not a roadway, but a link between our lands. It binds— Dar’Nethi power—It must remain open. To make things right. Your passions—Life flows—” All of a sudden the Dulcé was fumbling with words. A dozen false starts and disconnected phrases. Screwing his face in knots and tugging at his black hair with his short fingers. “I’m sorry I cannot explain better today. If only D’Natheil could—”

He bit his tongue and glanced uneasily at the Prince before grasping at some thought and plunging ahead more smoothly. “King D’Arnath could not allow the Zhid free passage to your lands. He sent J’Ettanne and his followers here to maintain the far Gate—the Exiles’ Gate—and their part of the Bridge. Then he enchanted the Bridge with his strongest wards so that no one could use it to cross the Breach. J’Ettanne and his people could never return to Avonar nor any come here to succor them. It took the Dar’Nethi hundreds of years to discover D’Arnath’s secret way to make the passage. By that time, of course, the Gates were long closed. All was done for your mundane land’s safety.”

I puzzled at these spotty explanations, but no path of reason led me anywhere that made sense. We had to unlock D’Natheil’s mind. If the Bridge was only an enchantment, then what did Baglos mean when he talked of people crossing it? What chasm was so wide that people could find no other way around it?

“It’s near sundown, Seri.” Tennice held out my cloak. “We have an appointment. Perhaps more of this mystery will come clear with it. The thought that some higher purpose was served by all that misery… I’d like to think it. But your evidence wouldn’t stand in any court of law.”

“He did it,” I said. “Karon opened their Gates.” No matter what the sense or nonsense of Baglos’s explanations, my bones resonated with the truth of my dream. I had been adrift for so long. Now, perhaps, I had found an anchor.

The streets of Yurevan were full of people, hurrying through patterns of lamplight and shadow. I was afraid to expect too much from the meeting with Celine, but after the revelation of the dream, it was hard to keep myself in balance. What other truths might I discover, now that this one basic understanding was so changed? By the time the four of us entered the quiet, narrow street near the herb shop, my heart was racing.

The shop was closed and dark, shutters drawn, but Celine had instructed us to enter through her rear courtyard, where Kellea would meet us. Yellow lantern light and the heavy scents of herbs and flowers guided us through a dark alleyway, and we found Kellea waiting amid the crowded boxes and planters. But her greeting was not at all what we expected. In her hand was a battered, yet quite serious, sword. “Don’t think that because I’m a woman, I’m incapable of using this. I practice, and I’m very good.”

“Please believe me,” I said. “We wish no harm to either of you.”

“My grandmother took me to a sorcerer-burning when I was a child. She said it was ‘necessary” for me to learn of it. And so I did. Nothing is worth the risk of such a death: not sorcery, not you, not princes who’ve lost their minds. I care only for my grandmother. If you mean what you say, then go away and leave her be.“

“You say you care for her, but it’s clear you don’t care enough,” I said. Kellea had not chosen her time well, not when the truth of the dream was so fresh in my mind. “You’ve chosen your own path. Good enough. But you deprive your grandmother of the same dignity. Is it because she’s old? Is she incapable? You’ve listened to no lesson she’s taught, if you set yourself up to make her choices for her.”

“Ah yes, the holy ‘Way of the J’Ettanne,” “ said the girl, sneering. ”Well, I despise their Way. I will not submit to my “fate,” and I will not let you endanger my grandmother. You don’t know. You didn’t see it.“

The arguments might have come from my own mouth. And only on this day did I have any reason to refute them. “But I have seen it. The one I saw burn was my husband whom I loved beyond anything on earth, and I had to let him do it.”

Kellea shook her head. “You’re a fool.”

“Yes, I was a fool, but only because I didn’t trust the choices he made. I could see only the horror and grief that would result from them. He believed there was more. I’m still not sure he was right—perhaps the universe does have some larger pattern that I just can’t see—but it was not my place to judge.”

“Kellea?” The dry voice floated from the window.

“One moment, Grandmother.”

At Celine’s call, Kellea’s sword point drooped only a hair’s breadth from its ready position, but it was enough for D’Natheil. In a motion as quick and fluid as a dancer’s, he snatched the weapon and laid it on the brick paving stones beside Kellea’s feet, bowing in mock courtesy. We left her fuming in the courtyard while the four of us walked into her kitchen and through a hallway to Celine’s door.

“Come in, come in,” said the old woman. The evening breeze carried the fragrances from the courtyard planters through the sitting-room window, and a white china lamp painted with pink flowers cast rosy shadows over the walls, leaving the boundaries of her little domain indistinct. “Forgive us. My granddaughter is headstrong.”

“She loves you very much,” I said.

“I wish—Well, perhaps someday she will find joy in her talent and her life. So this is our mysterious pair?”

The Dulcé and the Prince stood on either side of me, while Tennice crowded the passageway behind us. “Madame Celine, this is Baglos of the Dulcé”—Baglos bowed with great dignity, one arm behind his back, and Celine nodded graciously in return—“and this is D’Natheil, whom Baglos tells us is a prince of the royal house of Avonar.” The Prince stood stiff and expressionless. Wary, I thought. Uncertain. I hoped the season stayed calm.

“Please excuse my lack of courtesy, Your Grace,” said Celine, beckoning D’Natheil closer, deftly ignoring his rudeness. “Once I’m installed in my chair, not even royalty can dislodge me. And I’ve a serious lack of thrones here. You’ll have to sit upon your own dignity.” She tapped one slippered foot on the floor in front of her.

Baglos looked slightly shocked, but translated the old woman’s words for D’Natheil. The young man listened gravely, then stepped out of the shadows, sat himself on the bare wood at Celine’s feet, and bestowed upon the old Healer the gift of his smile.

“Oh, my,” she said, raising her eyebrows and laying her dry fingers on his cheek. “What sorcery is this? I didn’t doubt your words, Seri, but this… this is beyond your telling. Beyond wonder. Can you not see—?” She glanced sharply at me. “No, perhaps not. Kellea!”

The girl appeared in the doorway, her complexion an unflattering blotchy red.

“Kellea, dear one, I want you beside me tonight.”

While I settled myself on a footstool beside the door, and Tennice folded his long limbs onto the floor beside me, Celine rocked gently in her chair, quietly staring at the not-at-all-self-conscious D’Natheil. Kellea took up a position beside the window, standing with her back pressed against the wall and her arms folded tightly across her breast.

“Do you know what I’m going to do?” Celine asked D’Natheil, when we were still.

Baglos, positioned immediately behind his master, translated quietly. The Prince kept his attention on Celine and nodded in response. The Dulcé managed this so smoothly, one could almost think that D’Natheil and Celine were speaking with each other directly.

“And you consent to it? You give me permission to enter your mind and relate to these people whatever I find there?”

D’Natheil nodded again.

“Seri has told you that this may help you regain your memory. That’s possible. If some physical ailment is hindering your memory or your speech, I can almost warrant success. I am very good at such things. But what I feel in you… There is much in you that is not of you.” She sipped from a porcelain teacup, and then returned it to the small table next her chair. “Well, we shall see. You will know whatever I find. I’ll reflect each image I discover. Just nod your head if it’s familiar, and we’ll go on. When we find something that is new to you, I’ll tell the others. If there comes a time when you wish me to stop—I understand you cannot speak, but just think your intent, form it clearly in your mind—and I’ll hear you. Do you understand?”

Once more, the Prince agreed.

The old woman put a wrinkled hand on either side of D’Natheil’s head. Interesting, I thought, as the familiar tension began to vibrate throughout the room, how those who feared sorcery believed it came through the eyes, while Celine, like Karon, closed hers to begin her work. After a while she blinked them open, and D’Natheil dipped his head. Another while and he nodded again. So it continued. Silently. Forever, it seemed, until Celine abruptly yanked her hands away. She shuddered, sat back in her cushioned chair, and dropped her hands into her lap, the wrinkles on her brow very deep indeed. “Powers of earth, what’s happened to you?” Only the rosy light gave color to the old woman’s soft wrinkles, and her eyes wrapped the Prince in an embrace of sympathy and concern.

“I’ve found no memory he does not recognize,” she said. “The only images in his mind are those you’ve shared. Indeed, I can find no person here, no history, no hidden life. I sought out his earliest memory: fierce, biting cold and immense confusion, an overarching certainty of danger. The next thing he knows is your face, Seri, frightened, angry, in a forest near a stream—a stark, powerful image, as if a knife blade had pierced his head. But we know that was only a few weeks ago, and so I started again at the cold and reversed direction. But when I go backward, I find only darkness. A well of darkness. Terror, confusion, loss… holy goddess mother, such dreadful emptiness.”

“But isn’t this what you’d expect from one whose memory is damaged?” said Tennice, voicing my own question.

“Not at all. With one whose memory is damaged, I would find traces, threads from the hidden life. I could follow them into the dark part of the mind and work to heal the injury. But not with this one. It’s as if he were newborn from chaos at the time he met Seri. He is as you see him, unless”—she leaned forward again and laid two trembling fingers on D’Natheil’s cheek—“unless this enchantment I sense is responsible. If I could unravel the enchantment, heal whatever damage it has done, then perhaps we could learn more.”

D’Natheil listened carefully while Baglos repeated all of this, then motioned to the old woman to continue.

“This will be more difficult,” Celine said to D’Natheil. “Once we start, we must go to the end of it. No stopping, no changing course.” Her expression was drawn with worry, and, as if to soothe herself, she stroked his hair. I was surprised he allowed it, but indeed, he smiled for her again.

Celine’s eyes widened. “Oh, my son, what miracle has brought you to us? Whatever I find in you, it will not be all of you, I think.” She reached into the sewing basket that sat beside her chair and pulled out a tiny silver knife and a strip of white linen. “This is the way we’ll have to do it, the only way I know to heal this deeper hurt.”

Celine locked gazes with D’Natheil, and he held out his arm to her. Then she opened her arms wide, and my heart swelled as she began the J’Ettanni invocation. I whispered the words along with her. “Life, hold. Stay your hand. Halt your foot ere it lays another step along the Way. Grace your daughter once more with your voice that whispers in the deeps, with your spirit that sings in the wind, with the fire that blazes in your wondrous gifts of joy and sorrow. Fill my soul with light, and let the darkness make no stand in this place.”

D’Natheil did not even blink when the old woman scored his muscled arm with her little knife. When she had done the same to her own left arm, so scarred that no bit of flesh remained untouched, she deftly bound her paper-skinned limb to the strong young one. “J’den encour, my son.”

Celine might have been the only person in the Prince’s universe. Curiosity and urgency defined every line of his body. Celine’s eyes were closed, her only motion the constant, gentle nodding of her white head. About the time I came to the conclusion that this attempt, too, must come to nothing, the old woman’s eyes popped open in astonishment, and in my head resonated a voice and a presence that belonged to no one in that room.

Let your ears be opened, D’Natheil, my honored prince, my beloved son. I trust this message finds you well and among friends. Know that it was never my desire to cause you the distress and confusion that cloud your mind, though it is the inevitable result of what I have done to you. Small comfort, I know, since you cannot remember me. If we succeed in our plan, then you will know my reasons; if we do not, then you will be beyond the Verges, and such trivial questions will be moot. I do not apologize, for I had no alternatives.

I had never heard such a voice, its timbre the image of thunder and wind, bearing within it a complexity of love, wisdom, and monumental pride. Everyone in the room heard the same, I judged. A pale Tennice slammed his hands to his ears. Kellea opened her mouth and stared at the Prince with revulsion. Baglos leaped to his feet, backing away from D’Natheil and Celine, hissing, “Dassine!”

To you, friends of D’Natheil, who have found a way to unlock this message, my gratitude and admiration. By your deeds you bolster our last hope. Some say it is unwise to trust any but our own with the knowledge I give you, but our days grow short. Now you have come this far, I must believe that you, whom I have entrusted with our future, are able and willing to do what must be done next. And so my words are meant for you as well as D’Natheil.

The man lived in my head as truly as did my own thoughts… a cool morning… a dove cooing mournfully from a garden beyond an open door… fat dripping into a cooking fire … I would have sworn that I heard and smelled and felt his surroundings as truly as I smelled Celine’s flowers and felt the shifting airs of the mild Vallorean evening.

My name is Dassine. I am a Preceptor of Gondai, and I dwell in the city of Avonar, from whence I have sent this D’Natheil and the Dulcé who is his Guide. With the release of this enchantment that I have buried inside you, my prince, you will know how to unlock the knowledge of the Dulcé. If you have not yet learned of our history, of the Catastrophe that we have wrought upon ourselves, of the war that threatens to throw the universe into chaos, or D’Arnath’s Bridge that is your singular responsibility and our lasting hope for redemption, then you must ask these things of the good Dulcé.

Baglos stumbled backward over my knee, grabbing the door frame to steady himself. I paid him no mind, for I was mesmerized by the enchantment, especially when I believed… when I knew… the sorcerer’s words were meant for me.

Our world is not the world you know. Gondai exists side by side with your own in much the same way that a reflection or a shadow exists side by side with its original, its subordinate nature only a matter of one’s point of view. As the reflection completes the image, and the shadow defines the light, so do our two worlds create a balance in the universe — the power of enchantment that exists in Gondai and the exuberant passions that flourish in your world. When life’s essence flows between us as it was meant to do, we are both immeasurably enriched.

“I knew it!” I murmured, though no one in the room had attention to spare for me. Another world—the mad idea I had not been able to articulate. The only answer to the puzzle of two Avonars… of gates and bridges and the exiled J’Ettanne.

For thousands of years our talents, so different from those of your people, were nourished by the glorious abundance and beauty of our world. We knew of your world, too. We wandered into it freely through the many gateways that joined us, but we were shy of the vigorous life you lead, never revealing ourselves and never staying too long.

After our Catastrophe —a disaster birthed of three sorcerers’ pride —our world lay in ruins. Yet we believed that our connection to your world would be enough to empower us, even to repair such damage as had been done. But the Catastrophe left a Breach between us, a chasm of chaos that destroys the reason of any who attempt to cross it and blocks this flow of sustenance that we need so desperately. Thus our king, D’Arnath, conceived and built this Bridge —a link of enchantment between the worlds —to be our salvation, to restore the balance and allow life to flow between as it had ever done. He and his beloved brother J’Ettanne pledged their lives and those of their heirs to defend the Bridge and the Gates that bounded it against any challenge. Once a year they would pass through the Gates and walk their part of the Bridge, using the link as a lifeline through the chaos and spending their power to repair and strengthen and sustain it. Their oath is a bulwark of the Bridge, a critical part of the enchantment that sustains it.

The Dulcé can tell you how we have fought to keep their oath for this thousand years, and how often we have failed. We Dar’Nethi are much diminished since the days of D’Arnath and J’Ettanne, and stand at the verge of losing everything we value within ourselves, as well as without.

You children of that other world might well say, “What has this to do with us? Why should we care that a foolish and greedy people have destroyed themselves?” What you must understand is that our doom is also yours. When the Gates are closed, your world, too, falls out of balance, disharmony and discord festering into wars and great wickedness. And the Lords of Zhev’Na —these three of our kind who have created this disaster —rejoice, for the evils of your world nourish their power and strength far beyond what our lore can explain. D’Arnath and J’Ettanne knew that if the Bridge were to fall, your world would follow Gondai into everlasting ruin. Thus, they took upon themselves the responsibility for your safety, as well as ours.

For hundreds of years the Gates have been closed, the Lords growing in power with every rising of the sun. We fear the Bridge is near its end, either from the corrupting influence of the Breach it spans, or from the relentless assaults of the Lords on Avonar. Ten years ago, the Exiles gave us one last chance to repair it. We have come near squandering that chance. And so now, in our last hour, we have sent our prince, D’Arnath’s last Heir, to walk the Bridge once more.

What I have done to you, D’Natheil, was necessary. I had counted on time enough to help you discover your way, to help you learn what you must do to make the Bridge strong and resilient. But our luck has run out. After a thousand years of trying, the Lords of Zhev’Na have at last discovered how to break the power of D’Arnath’s oath, a secret that we ourselves do not know. You are all that stand in their way. I fear for your life, D’Natheil, and for your soul, and I fear for the Bridge. It must not fall. Our enemies don’t know what I have done to you or how little we know about D’Arnath’s enchantments, and so your task is even more difficult than they suspect.

This is a formidable burden, and in your darkness and confusion must seem impossible, but you must understand, my prince… my son… that there is no one more worthy of our trust than are you. As you learn of yourself, you will discover what must be done to save us. The glory of your fathers lives within you, and, given time, it will blaze forth as hope for the peoples of both worlds.

I thought perhaps the message was done, but anger rumbled in my belly, and I did not believe it was my own.

One last truth that even the Dulcé may not know. With shame I must tell you that not all of our enemies have the empty eyes of the Zhid. Some who wear our own likeness have become so lost in their despair that they’ve sold their souls to preserve this fragment of life we call Avonar. They think that the Lords will honor their word, and that they themselves can embrace life again once enough murder and betrayal has been done. The sword of D “Arnath is a mighty talisman. Tales say it can give our warriors strength to hold against the Zhid, perhaps to push them back. For more than four hundred years has the sword lain with the Lords in their stronghold of Zhev’Na, but now these traitors have made an unholy —

The crash of splintering wood and breaking glass shattered our trance, breaking off the message. Rhythmic pounding battered the front of the herb shop, as if someone were trying to kick in the door. Emitting a string of oaths that would make a soldier blanch, Kellea retrieved her sword. “Take care of my grandmother!” she cried, as she disappeared into the passage.

“Seri, get them away!” Tennice said, drawing his sword, and starting after her. “I’ll meet you at the horses if I can. But don’t wait for me.”

Baglos charged into the room and dropped to his knees beside the Prince. “My lord D’Natheil! Come quickly!” But D’Natheil’s gaze was locked on Celine.

“Madame Celine, we must go,” I said, forcing my voice calm as I crouched beside the old woman’s chair and snatched up her healer’s knife. “I need to cut the binding. Please, can you hear me? I’ll wait for your word.”

“One moment,” said the old woman softly. “I must look deeper. I must know what he is.”

From the shop came a thundering crash, then shouts and the clash of swords. A man’s cry of painful wounding. But around me enchantment surged, and in the midst of the clamor intruded a sound so at odds with all the rest, I almost could not name it: laughter.

Celine sat pale and fragile by her fragrant window, chuckling merrily. “Cut it now,” she said, her voice soft and hoarse. “Oh, to meet this Dassine! What audacious conceit! And what power to do this thing…”

I cut the bloodstained linen, and Celine’s arm dropped limply into her lap. “Seri, come here,” she whispered, falling breathless back into her cushions. “Come close.” Even in my terrible anxiety, I could not refuse her. “You have to know,” she whispered in my ear. “Look deep. It is a wonder, all—” The old woman took a breath and tried to speak again, but shook her head. Then her head fell back, and, still smiling, she closed her eyes.

The noise from the other room grew louder. We dared not leave the old woman here alone. I shook her shoulder. “Madam Celine, we must get the Prince to safety. You need to come with us, too. D’Natheil, you’ll have to carry her.” I tried to tell him with my stupid gestures and the smattering of words I knew in his tongue.

Though his face was beginning to reflect the desperate sounds from the other room, the Prince remained at Celine’s feet. He took her dry, wrinkled hand and kissed it, and then he looked up at me, tears welling in his blue eyes. “It’s no use to take her,” he said hoarsely. “She’s dead.”