Son of Avonar

CHAPTER 6

Interregnum

The night of Karon’s revelation was a night of intoxication. We were four initiates caught up in the heady exhilaration of mystery and conspiracy. As our questions flew about the library like autumn leaves in a whirlwind, Karon pleaded that we had no time to waste. “I must go. Give me an hour. Then go to a sheriff, tell him my name, and report what you’ve seen. I’ll not have you compromised for me. Every moment you delay increases your danger.”

Julia was weeping, trying to thank Karon for saving Martin’s life, and asking what refreshment might relieve the toll his night’s work had so clearly taken on him. Tanager swore to slit the throat of any man who said that what we had seen was anything but holy, and began reviewing the events aloud as if we had not witnessed them for ourselves. “Stars of night, man, you’ve got to tell us how you do it,” he said.

“You can’t just leave it.” Even Tennice pushed his brother aside and said he’d appreciate knowing one thing: Could Karon just tell him whether it was one of the Twins, or the First God Arot himself, or some unknown god who guided his hand in such works, or was it, instead, some factor of the blood?

I was so filled with wonder, I could not decide what to ask first, so I just kept mumbling that no one in that room could ever be so cowardly as to betray him to the law. He could never have heard me above the clamor. We might have continued all night in such fashion, but Karon looked more distressed by the moment and cast a pleading glance at Martin, even as he tried to disentangle himself from our exuberant circle.

“Silence, all of you!” Martin bellowed. “Karon, step into the garden for a moment—no farther, mind you! We must give these nattering fools a chance to think.”

Only when an exasperated Karon had retreated through the garden doors did Martin turn to us. “Sit down and listen, friends. This is perhaps the most dangerous night of your young lives, and I’ll not have you go forward without stopping for one moment to give it some serious consideration.”

Once we had obediently sat ourselves on the overstuffed couches, sobered by his serious tone, he went on. “This is the law of Leire—and Tennice can correct me if I miss a word or two. To harbor a sorcerer, to knowingly speak with a sorcerer or listen willingly to one word from his mouth is punishable by death—not the unspeakable death Karon will suffer if news of this night’s deed escapes this room, but death, nonetheless. To my everlasting shame, my weak and selfish impulse has put him and you in this danger. He has risked the stake, the burning of his living flesh… and every conceivable torment that could make even such horror as that a welcome gift… to save my pitiful life. Yet I know him well, and the last thing he would wish is to buy his safety with ours. Every moment that we delay in turning him over condemns us alongside him. You must think soberly of your lives and your futures. If you do not accuse him as he insists, then every breath you take from this night forward will have a binder on it, every word you speak will be restricted, every truth to which you swear will be tainted by the shadow of a lie, a secret, a withholding. No soul beyond this room can ever hear this tale, be it husband, wife, child, or lover. Never. Ever. Or we are all forfeit. Now, hold your peace until I give you leave. Think carefully.”

We obeyed his command in seeming. But one glance at each well-known face told the answer. No one of us would ever preserve his own life by setting the hounds on Karon. When Martin released us from our silence, we told him exactly that. Yet even as we released our pent-up indignation—that Martin might, in the remotest chance, believe one of us could be such a craven coward—my cousin confronted each of us individually, asking if we would swear to keep Karon’s secret, be damned whatever came. Each one agreed. He came to me last.

“And you, my dear cousin. Never would I knowingly have faced you with this circumstance. To require you to carry such a burden into a marriage…”

“There is no burden here, Martin,” I said. “Every time I’m at Windham my world grows larger. Who better to understand truth than one who might be queen?”

There. I’d said it. The fact that could not be lost in the excitement of the night.

Martin smiled at me fondly. But behind the lines that five and forty years of good humor had written on his kind face was pain and worldly wisdom that I could recognize, though not yet understand. “If I’d only kept that thought in my head a few hours ago, perhaps I could have spared Karon and all of you the consequences of my unforgivable cowardice. Go fetch him, and we’ll let him tell you more of truth.” Tennice and Julia poured brandy, while I hurried toward the garden door.

I found Karon stretched out on his back in the grass, his arms behind his head, gazing upon the stars that were scattered like diamond dust on the black velvet sky. Not wishing to startle him, I approached quietly, and so I glimpsed the expression on his face before he was aware of me. Not fear. Not anxiety. Only yearning—the same hunger I glimpsed when he walked with me in the garden or at the times when he stepped back from our laughter in Martin’s drawing room and embraced our company with his eyes. In seeing him devouring the glory of that night, and in thinking of all I knew of him and all I had witnessed, both the essential question and its answer sprang up wholly formed in my head. I believed I might already understand what he would tell us.

I cleared my throat and sat down on the grass, wrapping my arms about my knees and waiting a moment to see if he would look around. He kept his eyes on the sky, but he blinked and shifted his arms protectively across his chest, so I knew he was aware of me. “You’re replenishing yourself,” I said, venturing my theory. “Replacing what you spent on Martin.”

“Yes.”

“That’s what it’s all about. What you are all about. Beauty, joy, friendship… these things you are able to cache within yourself… and then spend.”

“Life. All of it. Pain and sorrow are wonders, also. But, of course, beauty is easier.” He rolled to his side and propped his head on his hand, smiling as one will do to soften a hard truth.

“And the spending… is sorcery.”

“Exactly so.”

“I want to know. About you. About all of it. Why have we been so deceived?”

That sorcery equated with evil was a fundamental construct of the universe, a fact as sure as that time moved forward and not back. No history or science was required to prove it any more than history was required to say the earth was solid beneath our feet or the ocean fluid. Not only our priests condemned sorcery, naming it as one of the abominations of the earth that Arot had tamed in the Beginnings, but our kings and wise men, our mothers and grandmothers, men of science and warriors, believers and unbelievers agreed that it was a perversion of nature. Now, in one short hour everything had changed, and the gap in my knowledge of the world was so vast, so stark, I believed my head must cave in. This man and the healing I had seen him work were as far from evil as anything I had ever known.

Karon sat up and, after one quick glance at me, dropped his eyes and began picking at the grass. “I wanted to tell you—and the others—but because of how things were with you… your future… it made no sense. And then today, I should have sent you all away, but I didn’t even think of it. After so many years, not to think of it… Maybe it was because I wanted you to understand.” He shook his head wonderingly and expelled a quick breath. “I always thought it would be so hard to explain, but I should have known you would put the pieces together. Even Martin took a while to understand the connection you’ve just seen.”

Why was it that those of Martin’s circle were forever underestimating me? “I would imagine that Martin had neither the patience nor the incentive to observe you as closely as I have over the past two years,” I said. “There are some things at which a woman is an expert before she is eighty!”

The words came out more prim and bristly than I intended, but Karon burst out laughing and I felt myself consumed by his remarkable eyes. “Oh, gods, Seri, how I love you! What I wouldn’t give—ah!” He bit off his words and looked vexed. “Damn! My tongue will not keep still. My habits are all askew tonight.”

He jumped to his feet and offered me his arm, instantly sober and contained. “Come,” he said softly. “The others will remember all their training and believe I’ve eaten you.” I allowed him to pull me off the grass, but I did not take my eyes from him. Everything was changed yet again by that moment’s revelation. Though he avoided my gaze and swallowed his words as if to recall them, nothing would erase what I had just heard. Truth. As clear as the clean-washed night.

We strolled across the garden, up the steps, and into the library, but I might have been treading on cloud or water for all I knew. Only when we halted in the middle of the library did I wrench my eyes from Karon’s face. The others were staring at us, sipping brandy, and waiting. I could not think what they were waiting for.

“We thought perhaps you two had wandered into some other garden,” said Julia, her head tilted, peering at us thoughtfully.

“This exceptional young woman would not get lost in Hierant’s Maze,” said Karon, releasing my arm and immediately retreating toward the hearth. “She has been explaining her theories of sorcery to me.”

As I sank to the leather couch beside Julia, Martin widened his eyes and waggled his eyebrows at her. I felt the blood rise to my cheeks, but before my cousin could come out with whatever clever jibe he was concocting, Karon drew the group’s attention back in his direction. “So have you decided, sensibly, that I must be on my way?”

Oh yes, the grim reality of the night. Somehow I could no longer grasp it.

Tennice snorted. “Seri! You didn’t get even that far in almost an hour?” Everyone but Karon and I laughed, and my face flamed hotter.

“There was no time,” Karon said, clasping his hands behind his back. “The young lady was busy reading my soul and reciting to me its inner workings, telling me I must explain a few things more so as to advance her education.”

“Well,” said Martin, “since Seri was distracted from her task, I’ll tell you that these young lions have sworn on their lives and honor—and most importantly, their tongues—that your secret does not go beyond this room. They understand the consequences for you and for themselves if it should. So it’s up to you. We will take the risk of having you here. If you are willing to take the risk of our silence, then there’s no need for you to go.”

“I’ve traveled enough for the present,” said Karon, softly, and the great hand which had been clenching my heart and stomach released its grip.

Martin laid his hand on Karon’s shoulder. “If you’re to be with us for a while longer, and since I don’t think any of us are yet ready for sleep, then perhaps, as Seri suggests, it’s a good time to tell your friends the history they never learned.”

“As you wish.”

Another log was thrown on the fire. More brandy was poured. The two starving lamps winked out, leaving the pool of light from the hearth as the only illumination. Karon settled himself on the patterned rug and began.

* * *

“I am of a people whose name you’ve never heard spoken, though we believed the race of the J’Ettanne was once as numerous as the Valloreans with whom we came to share a language. Much of our history has been lost, and I’ve never heard any explanation of why we were born so different or whether at some time we had a land of our own. Our oldest stories say only that the J’Ettanne scattered throughout the Four Realms because they were constantly wondering what was beyond the next hill or past the next turn of the road. A J’Ettanni man and wife might labor to build a house and plant a crop, only to abandon them before the vines bore fruit, just because a day’s sunrise was so lovely that they wanted to see what might lie east of their land. Or another might move to the next town when he heard there was a minstrel there who had sung a new song of surpassing beauty. Our neighbors thought our wandering life odd, for they didn’t understand that the accumulation of experience is the essence of J’Ettanni power.”

The flames in the hearth set the shadows to dancing about the room.

“And yet, our people were welcomed everywhere, for their only desire was to spend their power for good. Some could infuse new life into herds and crops. Others could build skillfully and beautifully. They could make light or fire from nothing… well, their talents could be applied to so many things.”

Karon’s face was sculpted by the firelight as he spun his tale of wonder, his eyes riveted on the orange flames as if the only way he could proceed was to convince himself that no one was listening.

“The world was much as it is now. Greed and ambition set people against people, and a sorcerer’s talents were too valuable to ignore when battle was to be joined. Most refused to join the service of the local warlords. To use their power for destruction violated everything the J’Ettanne believed. But the warlords tried to force them by taking their families hostage or burning their homes. Even if a man aided his lord willingly, he might find himself set against an army wherein his cousin, or his brother, or his sister was forced to serve.

“And so a group joined together, calling themselves the Free Hand of the J’Ettanne, determined that the J’Ettanne be a people who would speak for themselves, not subject to any lord. Deep in the mountains that you call the Dorian Wall lay an ancient stronghold that J’Ettanni legend said was a place sacred to our people. The Free Hand rebuilt the stronghold so that all could have a refuge in time of trouble. The secret of its location was closely guarded, passed carefully from one to another of the Free Hand, who swore on the lives of their children to keep it. They couldn’t allow the warlords to discover it.

“About the time the rebuilding was done, there came a split in the Free Hand. A faction calling themselves the Closed Hand thought it was enough for us to have a safe haven, so individuals could choose to serve the warlords or not. Another group, called the Open Hand, looked beyond our own needs and asked why should peasants or knights, any more than sorcerers, be pressed against their will into the service of those who were unworthy? With the gifts of the J’Ettanne, it would be possible to order the world in peace. After long years of disagreement, the Open Hand prevailed, and J’Ettanne rose up all over the Four Realms, proclaiming that there would be no more war, no cruelty, no brutality. No more.”

“How was it possible?” I burst out, unable to contain all the questions jostling each other in my head. “The talents you’ve described are impressive, but not enough to defeat true warriors.”

“Let me show you.” His gaze flicked around the room as if to make sure we were all still there. His cheeks were slightly flushed, and he quickly returned his attention to the fire. This is what they did, and what no one then or since has ever understood.

I heard him speaking as clearly as if his mouth were at my ear. But his lips did not move, and the room was silent save for the snap of a log in the fire. My neck prickled and my mind swelled with a presence that was not the one I carried with me every day. It was gentle and embracing and apologetic, but as undeniable and overwhelmingly powerful as a spring deluge. In that same moment, I felt an overpowering thirst, and I lifted my brandy glass to my lips.

This would not have seemed so extraordinary if Tennice and Tanager and Julia had not lifted their glasses at exactly the same moment in exactly the same motion, all of us stopping in a single movement as if time itself had halted. Suddenly, my knees felt like water.

“So you see,” he went on in audible speech once more, “how it might be possible to change many things with such abilities.”

Tanager, Tennice, Julia, and I… we looked at each other with astonishment, disbelief, and a hundred other emotions that were written on our faces. Tanager downed his brandy all in one gulp and jumped up from the floor to pour himself another. Julia’s slender hand seemed paralyzed, and she stared first at Karon and then Martin. Tennice slammed down his glass, sloshing the amber liquid on a small table and jerking his hand away. I forced myself to exhale, hearing the tremulous sound of my own breath as implications and possibilities ran riot in my head… terrifying possibilities… humiliating… violating…

Oh, Seri, don’t be afraid. No, I’ve never —not ever —done this to you before. You’ve had no thought that was not your own. You’ve felt no desire, performed no act that was not of your own will. And until this moment, I’ve never let myself hear anything but what has come from your lips.

The words carried so much more than their meaning—a plea for understanding that exposed a part of his most private self—that I found myself thinking, It’s all right; it’s all right. I’m not afraid. Not of you. And I knew it all was real when he glanced up quickly and gave me a tenuous smile.

“You can see how it might be easy to abuse such a gift,” he went on, “and why people might come to fear it. That was what happened. For thirty or forty years the Open Hand ruled the Four Realms and corrected all that seemed wrong. But the J’Ettanne were no wiser than other men and no more immune to self-importance, and more and more they liked to order things according to their whims. Those who disputed their rule were punished with nightmares and terrors until the poor souls thought they were going mad. The poor and ignorant were controlled with superstitions—rumors of vile monsters, spirits, and demons. By the time of the Rebellion, the J’Ettanne had enslaved the people they thought to save, and, in their arrogance, had written their—our—doom.”

“But what chance had ordinary people against such power?” Tennice sat stiffly in one corner of the couch with his third glass of brandy, his voice tight, verging on anger.

Karon stood up, folding his arms, a slender silhouette against the fire. “There were so few of us. That was the key. We had been scattered for so long that our numbers had not increased like those of other races. And it doesn’t matter if I can listen to what you’re thinking, for if all five of you are thinking at once, as loud and discordantly as possible, I can sort it out no better than if you’re all babbling at once.”

Tanager had stretched his long legs over the rest of Tennice’s couch, and with a wry grin poked one of his outsized feet at his older brother. “That’s exactly what Evan and I always did when we were boys. We’d bully Tennice into taking on Father over our last scrape, while we went off and got into another. We’d yell at him until he was so confused, he couldn’t think how hard Father was going to come down on him.”

Tennice glared sourly at Tanager… and then slowly, reluctantly, his stormy countenance relaxed and he broke into a rueful chuckle. “I had to take up the law as self-defense.”

Karon nodded, laughter dancing across his face like the wisps of summer fire above a midnight meadow. “Quite the same. In our case, it was only the matter of a single year until the Open Hand was overthrown. Those who came to power decreed that no one would be safe as long as any J’Ettanne walked upon the earth. No work of the J’Ettanne could stand and no memory of the J’Ettanne could survive. Thus began the extermination and the law that you know. The priests called us heretics and destroyed everything we had touched, as well as many things that had nothing to do with us. They closed down every temple and shrine, broke every statue, burned every writing, ruined every artifact that was not devoted to Arot and Mana or one of the Twins—”

“That’s why the temple rules are so strict about heresy, and priests are so quick to stamp out any talk of lesser deities like harvest gods or shopkeepers’ daemons or water spirits,” said Julia.

“Exactly so,” said Karon. “They couldn’t untangle politics and belief and superstition and sorcery. And so they had to destroy it all. Over the past four hundred and fifty years most of the J’Ettanne have been hunted down and killed, though I doubt three people in the world outside this room remember exactly why it’s done.”

“But where have you come from, then?” I said. “How have you managed to survive without being found out? There have been no… no sorcerer burnings… since I was a child.” The very words were as acid on my tongue.

“I’m getting to that.” With a grateful smile, Karon drained a glass of wine Julia had given him. Setting the empty glass on the mantelpiece, he continued. “Though most of the followers of the Open Hand were slaughtered right away, those of the Closed Hand held out for a few years in their stronghold. But they knew their days were numbered. With the hunt so virulent, they were sure to be discovered. So they decided to abandon the stronghold, building secret ways through the mountains and sending out a few families at a time to settle in remote places where they would not be known. These refugees carried with them two tenets: that the gifts of the J’Ettanne were for life and not destruction, and that no mind could be invaded without consent. At least a few survived and managed to escape detection for several centuries. Some prospered, particularly in one Vallorean city called Avonar. My ancestors were among them. As late as five years ago the Lord of Avonar, the Baron Mandille, was a J’Ettanne. He was my father…” His voice faded.

I caught my breath. “Avonar! Evard’s triumph. Did Evard know?”

Karon hesitated, glancing at me and then at Martin, who was perched on the back of Tennice’s and Tanager’s couch.

“He knew,” said my cousin in disgust. “I don’t know how, but somehow in the last days of the Vallorean War, King Gevron learned that sorcerers lived in Avonar and that they were the last. Gevron promised amnesty to every citizen of Avonar who returned to the city before midsummer’s day, proclaiming that he had decided to leave the place a free city because the lord of Avonar had tried to broker the peace between the Leirans and the Vallorean king. The war was over. They all went home. But instead of amnesty Gevron sent the Duke of Doncastre. When Evard sacked Avonar and slaughtered all who lived there, Karon was studying at the University, bound by his father’s command to keep his connection with Avonar secret.”

Martin paused for breath, and the four of us pelted him with questions, the most particular being how Martin had come to learn the truth about Karon before the rest of us.

“When I was in Yurevan two years ago,” Martin said, “I took a few days to visit a professor from the University whom I’ve known since my own student days. He introduced me to a young colleague who was collaborating with him on a cultural history of northern Valleor. Karon, of course. We enjoyed each other’s company immensely and went riding together several times over the course of the week.

“One day we came upon a young family with a newborn babe, the man and woman scarcely more than children themselves. They were starving, riddled with wasting fever, and had taken refuge in an abandoned charcoal-burner’s hut in the forest just beyond Ferrante’s land. The boy warned us off and, in his last despair, begged us to toss him a knife so he could put an end to his family’s misery.

“I would’ve done it, but our friend here said there was an alternative. He tried to shove me off with some twaddle about medical training and the risks of contagion, but being stubborn, as you all know, and damnably curious, I watched from concealment. And so I saw Karon do his little business with the three of them. Needless to say, he had to spend some time telling me all he told you tonight.”

Martin sighed. “We thought we were done with the incident, but didn’t the stupid young bastard ignore Karon’s requirement of silence and take his healthy wife and babe into town, telling everyone of the miracle that had come about. The fool thought he’d make his savior into a hero, but instead, at Ferrante’s house, we hear that a hunt is up for a sorcerer in the district. I managed to smuggle Karon back to Yurevan, meet him properly in different circumstances, and invite him here, never thinking I’d be so stupid as to put him back in the danger from which I had extracted him.”