Son of Avonar

CHAPTER 23

For more than a week, Tennice hovered between life and death. Baglos and I got enough tea and broth into him to sustain him through the bouts of madness that battered him like waves in an ocean of terror. The wound itself should have been well on its way to healing in a week’s time, but it swelled and seeped black fluid just as D’Natheil’s had done. Baglos swore it was tainted by Zhid poison. He had seen such wounds often, he said, with exactly the same symptoms. Unfortunately his people knew no remedy except to seek out a Healer.

Baglos seemed to take Tennice’s illness as a personal affront, and he expended hours of tender care on the sick man. Over and over, as he redressed the wound, I would hear him murmuring indignantly, “Why, why, why Zhid poison? Those men were not Zhid. They did not want him dead…”

Not Zhid, no. The attackers had been ruffians with brawn enough to smash shop windows, but so little skill they could be outfought by one warrior, a girl of twenty, and an aging scholar with poor eyesight. True, Graeme Rowan, a man I knew to be a Zhid informant—still a puzzle in itself—had been in the street nearby. Yet, if the attackers were Graeme Rowan’s men, then why was Rowan so ill prepared for our escape? Maceron was there, too. He had hunted Karon and betrayed him to Darzid… Darzid who had been hunting D’Natheil. But if the attackers were Maceron’s men, out to destroy a den of sorcerers at Darzid’s behest, then why Zhid poison on their blades? No arrangement of alliances and evidence made sense.

My companions were no help in clearing up my confusion. Though D’Natheil had found his voice, he was more aloof than ever, as if the breach in his wall of silence made companionship less necessary. He refused to be drawn into conversation with me beyond the plan for our current meal or setting the watch. Poor Baglos fared little better, despite his frequent attempts to engage his master in discussion of the future. D’Natheil would either interrupt him with a rude command or bolt outdoors. For either of us to see the Prince except at mealtime was an event worthy of remark. Strangely enough, Tennice’s illness was the single thing that drew him into our company.

On our third night at Verdillon, Tennice became so violent in delirium that neither Baglos nor I could control him. We were struggling to keep him still, when his flailing hand sent Baglos sprawling. The loud crack when the Dulcé‘s head struck a table said nothing good about the his ability to come to my aid. I was desperately trying to prevent Tennice from kicking over the lamp when he cried out in mindless terror and one of his hands smashed into my eye. Temporarily blinded and losing my hold, I felt hands drag me away and thrust me firmly into a chair.

I pushed back my hair and wiped my watering eyes to see D’Natheil sitting on the bed behind Tennice, wrapping his arms around my friend’s writhing body. One by one the Prince captured the flailing limbs, trapping them within the confines of his own long arms and legs. “Tassaye, tassaye,” he whispered. Softly, softly. Before very long Tennice gave a shudder and fell still, though his haunting moans and terror-glazed stare yet tore at my heart. I grabbed a damp cloth and blotted Tennice’s face, using the opportunity to spoon willowbark tea between his dry lips. Soon it seemed the worst was past.

“You can lay him down now,” I said. “I’ll tend him.”

D’Natheil shook his head. For another quarter of an hour he held the sick man. Only when the moaning and the racking shudders had stopped completely and Tennice slept did he untangle himself and slip the older man’s body onto the sheets.

“That was well done,” I said, noting several bloody scratches on his arm. “Let me take care—”

“Call me if he is in need again.” D’Natheil hurried out of the room.

Though I chafed in frustration at D’Natheil’s reticence, I hesitated to push him too much. It had been easy to patronize him when he was only a lost youth with an annoying temper. But now I had begun to think of him as a prince, and, though rank held no awe for me, his position as the last scion of a magical race from another world could not but separate him from the ordinary. He had a great deal to think about. As did I.

That Dassine meant for me to aid D’Natheil in his mysterious task seemed certain. Yet I was not sure I was willing. If Karon’s dying and its mortal consequences had presented the Dar’Nethi with a chance to win their war, then I had already given all one woman could be expected to give. Perhaps it was time to get on with my own life and leave this brute of a prince to deal with his. Besides, he seemed uninterested in my help.

Baglos refused to enlighten me on any matter regarding the Prince’s mind, claiming that a Dulcé Guide’s bond with a Dar’Nethi precluded it. The link between them was of such an intimate nature that it demanded inordinate trust, he said. When a Dulcé participated in the madris, the rite of bonding, he permitted his knowledge, his actions, his very perception of the world to be shaped by his madrisson’s command. And whenever the Dar’Nethi partner invoked his power to access his madrisse’s store of information, he, in essence, left his own mind open and vulnerable to the Dulcé‘s insatiable craving for information. Thus, when the madris was performed, the Dar’Nethi madrisson swore never to misuse his power of command, while the Dulcé madrisse vowed never to betray his master’s privacy. Because D’Natheil had not commanded Baglos to tell me anything of their discussions, the Dulcé could not and would not do so.

All right. I could understand such an arrangement, but the subject of the future must be broached, whether it suited His Grace or not. On the evening of the fifth day since the fire, I decided the time had come. Baglos was watching Tennice while D’Natheil and I ate the simple supper the Dulcé had prepared. Perhaps if I spoke before the Prince finished eating, he wouldn’t bolt.

I set down my cup. “Do you believe the things this Dassine told us?” I began.

D’Natheil pushed a bit of turnip about his bowl with a chunk of bread. “I know very few things, but that I can say. Dassine did not lie.”

“Have you decided what to do?”

“I must try to accomplish what’s needed.”

“Do you understand what that is?”

“I’ve had no magical insights.” His curt response seemed nothing more than the rudeness I had come to expect. Yet, as I searched for some reason to keep on caring about him, I noted how tight his skin was stretched and how long and thin were new lines about his eyes. The shifting candlelight made him look deathly tired.

“Have you been sleeping?”

“Some.” This declaration was in no way convincing.

“What prevents you?”

“I watch.” He tossed the half-eaten bread into his unfinished soup and shoved the bowl away.

“But we’ve all taken our turns watching. There’s been no sign of anyone. Why—”

“The Seeking comes almost every night. Your friend’s suffering draws it. I can… divert it… if I’m awake. They know we live, but they don’t know where we are. It must stay that way.”

“The Seeking…” I had taken my turns walking the garden and the front courtyard. How could I have missed the insidious dread, the sensory horrors? But then I recalled D’Natheil staring into the fire back in Jonah’s cottage, listening to things the rest of us could not hear. Perhaps the essence of the Zhid Seeking was not the alteration of light or the wafting stench. “You should have said something. We can share that watching as well as the other.”

“You and the Dulcé care for your friend.”

“We can do both. You don’t have to bear these burdens alone.”

He shrugged.

“All the more reason we must decide what to do next,” I said. “If the Zhid are so close, we need to be away from here as soon as we can move Tennice.”

“But I don’t even know where to begin.” He stood up abruptly, knocking over his chair. I expected him to storm out of the kitchen, but instead he began to circle the table, words pushing and crowding themselves past his reserve like a sudden cloudburst on a quiet afternoon. “A thousand times I’ve gone over it. This Bridge—I have no concept of its nature or form, no clue as to its location. No one knows anything of the Breach it spans, save that its horrors drive people to madness and ‘unbalance the universe”—whatever that means. Baglos tells me that the Heir of D’Arnath walks upon the Bridge and performs some enchantment to prevent its corruption by the forces of the Breach. Clearly I am expected to do this “walking,” but no one can tell me of the enchantment I must work, and my own people doubt that I am capable. Oh, yes, and these Zhid likely want me dead. The Dar’Nethi assume that my death upon the Bridge will destroy it.“

Astonished at this outburst, I found myself searching for something to answer him. “The Gate. Start there.”

He dropped into his chair again, leaned his forehead on the heel of one hand, and stared at the table. “The Dulcé says it is a wall of fire hidden in a chamber that only I am able to unlock… assuming I am who they claim. One passes through the wall of fire in one world, and after the perilous crossing of this Bridge which he cannot describe, one emerges in the other world—”

“—from the other Gate. They call the one in this world the Exiles’ Gate.”

“Evidently, that’s the usual way. But he says the destination can be changed before or during the crossing, and that’s likely why the Dulcé and I and the Zhid who followed us came out at different locations.” This colorless recitation of facts could not obscure his doubts.

“Yes, Baglos says he was ‘blown” from the Gate by what he calls the ’fracturing‘—displaced abruptly from it and you by some enchantment. But if you are to perform some deed at the Bridge, then those who sent you would want to make sure you could find it.“ I spoke faster as I bent my mind to the mystery. ”What if the destination was changed to protect you from the Zhid who had broken into the chamber? Perhaps only Baglos and the Zhid were removed from the Exiles’ Gate, not you. So if you go to the place where you first set foot in this world—“

“But I remember nothing of it. You heard the old woman.” Louder. Harder. His control was slipping again. But he wasn’t going to learn anything if he wallowed in doubt.

“Think about it. Work at it. What was the terrain? The landforms? Were there towns or villages nearby?”

His lips formed a stubborn line as he shook his head. “I ran. Days and nights without stopping, as if I had been running forever.”

“And so it appeared when you came to me. You were starving, exhausted, and sick. Baglos says he had been hunting for you for fourteen days when I found him. If you came straight to me from the Gate, then the Gate must lie ten days—ten days running—from Dunfarrie.”

“You’re guessing.” His fingers traced the grain lines in the oak table with such intensity that I would not have been surprised to see smoking patterns etched into the wood. He had dropped these few bits of himself in my hands, but clearly he had no confidence that I could make sense of them.

Yet I was not discouraged—not with the most intriguing mystery of my life unfolding in front of me. I jumped up from my chair and began my own pacing. “Another conclusion we can make. It was cold. Baglos says he felt the ”icy breath“ of the Zhid at the crossing. Celine said that your earliest memories were confusion—and bitter cold.”

“Confusion, certainly.”

Pieces snapped into position. “Ah, but you see, Karon told us, too. In his vision. When he found the word of healing buried inside him, he said he felt cold. The bridge he saw was made of ice.”

“But it’s summer.” His rebuttal was more a question than a protest.

“Exactly. But if you were to travel ten hard days straight west of my cottage, where would you be? Deep in the heart of the Dorian Wall, the highest mountains in the Four Realms, mountains so high that the snow never melts.”

“The royal city, Avonar, is in the mountains, so Baglos says,” said D’Natheil softly. His hands fell still as he looked up at me. “And that’s where the Gate exists in the other world, my world. Perhaps they built both ends of the Bridge in mountains.”

“Yes. In the mountains. They would have wanted it hidden, hard to find, hard to stumble onto by accident. It would have to be safe… a special place… a fortress…” Stars in the highest heavens… the answer lay before me as clear as my name. “D’Natheil, I know where it is. Or at least where to find out. There’s a map!”

“How so?”

“The J’Ettanne built a stronghold called Vittoir Eirit at a place that was sacred to their ancestors, although they had forgotten why. One of them left a map, telling how to find it. We’ll have to decipher the map…” I was afraid to let myself feel excitement. The evidence was so flimsy, the prospects so uncertain. Tennice had never seen the map, so his memory couldn’t reproduce it. I would have to go to Montevial and gain admittance to the vaults. I could envision the exact place where the journal was hidden. No one would have disturbed it. I told D’Natheil about the journal, and the Writer, and Karon’s and my futile attempts to interpret the map. “… but with you and Baglos, it’s possible. When Tennice is well, we’ll go get it.”

On the next day Baglos called me into the sickroom. Tennice had wakened and would not quiet until he spoke with me. He was so weak that Baglos feared to deny him.

“Where is he?” Tennice’s eyes blinked wide open as soon as I kissed his hot forehead. “Where’s Karon?”

I sat on the side of his bed and stroked his thinning hair. “He’s dead, Tennice. Ten years dead. You remember.”

“He stayed with me. In my head.” His eyes burned with more than fever. The pounding of his blood was visible through his pale skin.

“You were his friend, and he loved you. And it helped him, too, to be with you.”

“Run away, Seri. Take him away from the darkness.” Tennice clutched my hand with no more strength than a child. “The shadow will destroy him… enslave us all.”

“We’ll leave here as soon as you’re better.”

“You must get him away.”

“Hush, Tennice. Karon is beyond the Verges. No one can harm him any more, and all the shadows have fled with your dreams.” I took a cup from the Dulcé‘s hand. “Here, have some soup. Baglos is a cook without peer.” After two swallows, Tennice fell asleep again.

Unsettled by Tennice’s delirium, I wandered into Professor Ferrante’s study. On the night of our return to Verdillon, Baglos and D’Natheil had come here to remove the professor’s body, only to discover that someone had already done so. Baglos claimed it was not the way of the Zhid either to hide or bury their victims, so we assumed the household staff had done it. But we had seen no further sign of Ferrante’s servants. In almost a week, neither friend nor foe had come to Verdillon. It was very strange.

The study was quiet and sunny, a lovely high-ceilinged room painted yellow and white. Leirans having no foolish notions about unquiet spirits, I was not uncomfortable in the room. Only my mind was tainted with the lingering aura of murder, not the place itself. Baglos and I had both spent a number of hours there in the past days, the insatiable Dulcé devouring the professor’s books and maps while I poked through the records of Ferrante’s teaching. On this afternoon I lost myself tracing students’ names and studies, so that it seemed only a short time until the tall clock downstairs began to strike the hour. It struck slowly, reminding me both that I ought to wind it and that I was past due to relieve Baglos. As I left the library, a sunbeam glinted off something nestled in the thick carpet. I picked it up, a brass button of the type used on military coats. Guilty at having abandoned the Dulcé, I thought little of it and dropped it in my pocket.

On the next morning, just at dawn, the mystery of Ferrante’s missing servants was solved. After turning my bedside duties over to Baglos, I went out to walk in the kitchen garden to get a breath of air. The nighttime coolness had yielded early to one of the few hot days of Vallorean summer.

My mind raced ahead of my feet that morning, as I considered the problem of getting into the storerooms of the royal antiquities collection. Habits from my years in Dunfarrie had me stopping every few steps to pull up a straggling clump of threadweed that threatened a healthy plant or to pick a precocious bean that had ripened earlier than its fellows. When I found a row of carrots whose tops bulged from the damp soil, I stooped to pull a few of them for our supper. The carrots were hidden behind a row of trellises draped with limp pea vines, and so it was through the leafy barrier that I came eye to eye with a small, smudge-faced girl. Both of us stepped backward in surprise. The child recovered quicker and streaked for the iron gate in the garden wall, but I had longer legs and grabbed the waif before she could make her escape.

“Let me go!” cried the child in Vallorean. She looked to be eight or nine years old, with stringy hair that might have been straw-colored had it been it clean. “We’ve leave to take bits from the garden. Master said. I’m not stealing.” Tears rolled out of the child’s long-lashed eyes, streaking her grimy cheeks.

“You can keep the vegetables.” The child clutched an onion and a tiny cucumber tightly in her stained apron. “Just tell me who you are. Come on, what’s your name?”

“Kat.”

“Do you live nearby? On the grounds here perhaps?”

The child clamped her mouth shut.

“I promise—I wish you no harm. Was it Professor Ferrante who gave you permission to take things from the garden?”

Kat nodded, her lips quivering. “But he’s dead now.”

“Yes… I know.” My surprise had me stumbling. “Please, Kat, can you tell me what happened here? Where are your mama and papa?”

“Mum’s dead, just like Master.” Kat nodded with a weary acceptance that had no place on the shoulders of a child. “Same ones as killed Master did it.”

“Gracious gods… did… did they kill everyone?”

“Some ran off to the woods. But Mum fell and got tramped on by the horses. She didn’t remember me before she died, nor even her name. I don’t want those men to come back.” Kat gave a big sniff and wiped her face on her sleeve, leaving the sleeve and the face equally smeared. “You’re hurting my arm.”

I loosened my grip, but did not release her. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Kat. It’s just that I’m frightened of the wicked men, too. Are you hiding with your papa, then?”

She shook her head. “With Aunt Teriza. She was Chloe’s helper in the kitchen.”

“And the bad men didn’t hurt her?”

“We was gone to market that day. As we come back through the fields, we saw everybody running and screaming. We’ve been hiding in the root cellar all these days for not knowing what else to do. Aunt Teriza’s terrible afraid.”

“Can you take me to your aunt? Or perhaps you could bring her here? You could get more vegetables, and I could talk to her.” I laid my beans and carrots in the child’s apron. “Tell her that my name is Seri and that I’m here with Master Tennice, the professor’s friend.”

“She’s out by the gate.”

“Could you bring her? Will you trust me?”

Kat nodded, and when I let her loose, she sped down the path. In only a few moments, a rumpled, grimy young woman approached timidly, holding the little girl’s shoulders protectively.

“Please, don’t be afraid—Teriza, is it? My name is Seri. I’m a friend of Master Tennice.”

The young woman curtsied abruptly, cast her eyes down, and sat obediently on the bench I indicated, her hand gripping Kat’s.

“Kat, there’s a pot of soup on the stove. Go on and help yourself to all you want.” Brightening considerably, the child ran off, leaving Teriza looking even more uncomfortable. “Kat tells me you were cook’s helper here.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And Kat’s mother worked here, too?”

“Yes, ma’am. Nan was chambermaid for ten years, since she was fifteen. She got me the place when it come up.” The woman’s eyes filled with tears.

“I’m so sorry about your sister, Teriza. Kat is lucky to have you to care for her.”

“Kat’s a good child. Nan and I thought she might get on as scullery in a year or so.”

“Teriza, could you tell me of the ones who did these horrible things? Did you see them?”

I needn’t have worried about prying the story out of her. She poured out the tale as if it were burning a hole in her stomach. “It was the awfullest sight, miss. We come through the fields, tripping along smartly, for the day had made out rainy, and Chloe was anxious for the goods for the master’s birthday feast. When we come round the north paddock, we heard screaming so terrible it chilled my blood. I told Kat to get in the root cellar, for the commotion sounded like the war back when I was a girl. I thought maybe the Leiran soldiers had come back again.” She glanced up at me, flushing a deep scarlet.

“I crept up behind the stable, and peeked around, and saw what I hope never to see again in my years on this earth. Chloe and Jasper were running through the stableyard wailing, their eyes orange and bright like you hear about demons’ eyes. Chloe was tearing at her hair like it was burning her head, and it was all down flying wild, and her head was bloody from pulling at it. The two of them ran off into the woods. Then Loris come from the house, crying to Damien, the stable lad, ”Master’s been murdered!“ Damien stopped her and says, ”What do you mean?“ And Loris was crying and said, ”The demons. The demons slit poor Master’s throat“ And right then, two men—horrible men that I couldn’t bear to look on—come out of the house and pointed their fingers at Loris and Damien, and the two of ”em screamed so’s you thought their arms and legs was being pulled off. Then they ran into the woods too, and Damien pulled out his knife and started cutting his flesh to bits as he ran.“

Silent, dignified tears dribbled down Teriza’s smudged cheeks. “All I could think of was to find Nan. Sure enough, she runs out of the house into the yard, wailing like a cat what’s prowling. I was going to run grab her, but I feels Kat up close behind me. I lay on top of the child and shushed up her questions, and in no more time than a fingersnap, four riders come barreling from the front of the house, and they see Nan… and, oh, miss, they just trampled her down. When the riders was gone, we run to Nan, but she looked wild, and said, ”Who are you?“ She didn’t even know her own child or her own sister.” A single sob escaped the young woman’s control.

“Poor Nan.” I put my arm around the girl’s shoulders and released the flood.

“She died right there,” the young woman snuffled into my shoulder. “Kat and I took her to a hole down by the stream where they dig out ice in the winter. We put her in, and closed up the hole, and tried to say a prayer for her, though I don’t know my prayers as I should. But then I didn’t know what to do, for I thought of Master murdered, and I’m the only one left to tell. No one’d believe me, and they might think I done it. But Master was fair and honest and I’d never…”

The stretching shadows took on a more ominous cast. I squeezed Teriza’s shoulders as I gazed around the garden uneasily. “Of course you didn’t do it. Master Tennice is ill just now, but we’ll get him well, and he’ll advise you. Until then, you and Kat must stay with us in the house. My friends and I are at least a little protection.”

Teriza straightened her back and wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. “I’d be most grateful, ma’am. And most willing to do my duties or whatever might be needful. It’s a blessing to be sure to hear Master Tennice is alive. We didn’t know but what the wicked men got him as well.”

“Good. It’s settled then. All I ask is that you keep private any of our conversation that might seem… strange. If Professor Ferrante trusted you to be discreet, I’m sure we can also.”

“You can trust me, ma’am. I promise.”

None of this made sense. Why were we still unchallenged? If the Zhid had killed Ferrante and the servants so easily… Perhaps D’Natheil’s efforts were indeed shielding us. I considered Maceron and Rowan and the Zhid again, but I still could not get all the puzzle pieces to fit together.

Later, as a more cheerful Teriza washed up the dishes and wiped the table, I asked her again about a part of her tale. Tennice had said something similar and I hadn’t thought to question it. “You said there were four men riding out.”

“Aye, ma’am.”

“Tell me about them. Three of them were priests, is that right?”

“Aye. Three of them wore robes such as priests do. And the Leiran wore a coat.”

“A Leiran?”

“I believed him so, as he spoke only Leiran. Nan was teaching me, for Master had guests as was Leiran, and Nan said everyone in service should speak enough of it to do her duty. He wore a dark coat with shiny buttons.”

“Shiny buttons…” I reached into my pocket for the brass button I’d found in Ferrante’s library. Closer examination revealed what I hadn’t noticed before. The design engraved upon the button’s slightly tarnished surface was a dragon—the dragon of Leire.

“What was the Leiran like, Teriza? Did you get a look at him?”

“No, ma’am. They went by so fast. He wasn’t so tall as the priests. Light hair. Looked strong. But I didn’t see his face, as it was raining, and I was so scared.”

Of course, I knew a light-haired Leiran who wore a dark jacket with Leiran dragons on it, someone who had done business with the Zhid once before—Graeme Rowan, the upright sheriff.

It was a great day when Tennice was able to sit up and eat a few shaking spoonfuls of soup for himself. We all made a fuss over him. Even D’Natheil smiled and said he was pleased our patient had improved so fairly.

“How long has it been?” Tennice asked.

“Nine days. We were thinking you were going to sleep until winter,” I said.

“Thank you all. What can I say?”

“Say you’re feeling better.”

He smiled weakly. “No question of that.” He fingered the thick bandage on his side. “I don’t understand how a stupid knife wound could have such effects. Such nightmares. Vile. Strange.”

“Baglos thinks it was Zhid poison. D’Natheil had a wound with similar effects.”

Tennice looked at the Prince strangely. “You helped me a great deal, sir. Took me through the worst of it. It’s difficult to remember exactly how”—his voice faded—“but I thank you.”

D’Natheil tipped his head without speaking.

Kat made Tennice her special charge. She brought him food and clean linen, chattered to him when he was awake, and sat quietly at his side while he slept, solemnly feeling his brow for fever. She scolded him when he was up too long, demanding that D’Natheil or Baglos help him back to his bed, and she held his hand while he went to sleep, “so the master won’t have wicked dreams.” Tennice, for his part, was endlessly charmed and mystified by Kat’s whimsical view of the world.

But with all his progress, I could not predict when Tennice would be well enough to travel. He must have felt my anxiety on the morning I told him of my belief that the path to the Exiles’ Gate was the very same map Karon and I had puzzled over for a year.

“You must be off to get it then.”

“As soon as—”

He laid a finger on my lips. “No. Much as I would like to have the resilience of a twenty-year-old, no amount of wishing will make it so. We had many a discussion of realism at Windham, and I remember a young woman declaring that she could never understand why people refused to see themselves as nature sees them. ”One should rejoice in the wisdom of years,“ she would say, ”for it’s of so much more value than youth’s brute strength.“ ”

“Not fair to bring up a girl’s silly prattle.”

“She was right. While you are off adventuring, I will stay here. Teriza and Kat will spoil me unmercifully. I’ve food, wine, an abundance of books and paper, and immense quantities of ink. How could I lack? When you settle on a destination, leave a message with my father. This latest brush with mortality has convinced me that I must visit him. Once done, I’ll find you again. No god or demon will prevent it.”