The Soul Weaver

CHAPTER 25

“But, my lord Prince, how can we afford two more days of delay? What if another of the Vales is attacked? Only your presence rallied our warriors; only your power and your sword enabled us to take on so many.”

“I have taken the life of a Dar’Nethi, N’Tien. I held Ven’Dar’s bowels in my hand - an act of madness and revenge - and it matters not in the least that his execution was justified. The law is clear. I must be purified before I can act again as the Heir of D’Arnath. And on the day I confront the Destroyer, I must have all my rightful powers.”

The slender Dar’Nethi chewed the end of his drooping moustache like a nervous schoolmaster. “But, my lord - ”

“You will sit here and deploy our warriors as you see fit. You have a better head for it than anyone in Avonar, including me. Ce’Aret will govern in my stead. Ustele will hold the desert portals and Men’Thor the temporary command, as I’ve instructed him. Mem’Tara is new to the Preceptorate, but her experience in combat over the past fifteen years speaks for itself. With Ce’Aret’s advisement, she will lead the defense of Avonar. I’ve charged Radele with the safety of the Vales.”

The wizened old woman who sat behind the long table nodded and wagged a bony finger at N’Tien. “The Prince is correct. If the fiend Ziddari himself sat in this chamber or Parven or Notole had taken up residence in the Prince’s palace, it would make no difference. The Heir cannot lead with Dar’Nethi blood on his hands. I would stick my knife in him myself before I would permit it.”

Ce’Aret’s words were as brittle as the bones beneath her dry skin. It was difficult to avoid peering under the long council table just to make sure her weapon was not already aimed at my spleen.

Earlier in the day, the old woman had interrogated me about Ven’Dar’s death, battering me with her disbelief. The Heir was bound in service to the Preceptorate, so no privilege of my sovereignty could prevent her questioning. She had respected Ven’Dar immensely and could not easily accept the story of his rebellion and Seri’s death in his care. Only the need for hasty resolution and my sworn word on the sword of D’Arnath had prevented her demanding a more thorough investigation. What was one more lie beside those already spoken? But Ce’Aret’s hard gaze had never wavered all through the Preceptors’ meeting. My skin felt bruised.

The ranks of my Preceptorate had become pitifully thin: Ce’Aret seated at the center of the long table, shriveled, bitter Ustele on her left, the dark-haired, large-boned Alchemist Mem’Tara on her right. Four empty chairs. N’Tien, my gloomy chief strategist, sat at one end of the table jotting notes on his list of deployments. A few chairs faced the Preceptors’ table from the center of the chamber, available for petitioners or spectators. Men’Thor and Radele sat in two of them, exchanging sober whispers and passing messages to the three field commanders in attendance. D’Arnath’s chair - a plain, high-backed wooden chair of great antiquity - faced the council table, offset slightly to one side so Avonar’s prince could see and hear both Preceptors and spectators. I had been in and out of the chair all morning, too restless to sit still for long.

“So we are agreed, then?” I said.

Ustele hammered a stubby forefinger on the council table. “It is unforgivable to take time at this, our most desperate hour, to wallow in a discredited custom. No right-minded Dar’Nethi has undergone the Rite of Purification for seventy years; only the weak-willed seek it out. We should seal the caves with the cowards still inside.”

“I cannot but agree with you, Master Ustele,” I said,

“and I have a thousand things I would prefer to be about, but the law is clear. I’ll not let a missed provision stand between me and my legitimate claims. Are you not the one who holds me to the law so strictly? I’d not give you arrows to loft back at me.”

“Who will accompany you to the pools, my lord?” asked Mem’Tara quietly, as Ustele settled back in his chair with an expulsion of disgust. “It would have been Ven’Dar’s office.”

“Bareil will be my companion.”

“A Dulcé,” muttered Ustele, curling his lip. “I should have expected it. You have no taste for your own kind.”

“A most unusual choice,” said Mem’Tara. “Surely many Dar’Nethi would gladly serve you in this way.”

“My madrissé has served the Preceptorate longer than anyone save Ce’Aret and Ustele. He bears the necessary knowledge and full respect for our customs. No sorcery is required of the companion.”

They talked among themselves about the novel concept of a Dulcé taking a Dar’Nethi for purification. I half expected Men’Thor to volunteer Radele to supervise the rite, but he was too busy reveling in his new importance as the permanent commander of Ven’Dar’s troops and temporary high commander, already writing lists and sending messages even as he listened to our debate. His son’s appointment as a sector commander had almost set him crowing. The whisperings had already sped through the chamber and into the outer rooms. Everyone in Avonar would be expecting an quick appointment to the Preceptorate for one or both of them. I had best make certain Men’Thor’s initiative was severely limited during my absence, or he would have us knocking at the gates of Zhev’Na before sundown.

“And so when will you begin the ordeal, my lord?” asked Ce’Aret.

“Within the hour,” I said. “That’s why I assembled the Preceptorate so early. You can be sure I’ll make this business take as little time as possible. I’ve already sent my orders to those in the field, and you certainly have no need of my direction, Preceptor Ce’Aret. Avonar has never been out of your care. You can tell Mem’Tara all she needs to know.”

“And the announcement of Ven’Dar’s crimes and his death?”

“Nothing is to be said until I say it. We will leave the Destroyer in uncertainty. Tell Ven’Dar’s troops he is on a mission for me. Say anything you choose save the despicable truth.”

“So be it. Vasrin Shaper and Creator grant you balance, my lord Prince,” said the old woman, echoed by Ustele and Mem’Tara. I rose to leave, and everyone in the room rose with me. I didn’t look at any of them.

The Caves of Laennara were entered by a gated arch in a sheer limestone wall near the lower end of Kirith Vale, but their proximity to the city was in distance only. Every step along the steep, pebbled path that led from the road to the gate was an unfathomable separation from everyday life. The air became noticeably thinner, as if we had scaled one of the peaks that soared beyond the wall, and the normal sounds of the surrounding forest were muted: the rustle of the leaves soft, the darting movement of the rivulets of water that cut through the grass but a whisper, like exuberant children hushed by their mother.

The petitioner, the one who had come to cleanse himself of the burden of life-taking, kept silence on the road to the caves. You were supposed to gaze upon the forest, the sky, and the stream, the deer, the foxes, and the birds, taking their essence into your soul, building power for the ordeal ahead. Your companion walked ahead of you bearing a gold luminant, a small box of gold or brass with pierced sides, a lid, and a handle, designed to hold a living flame that would be used to light the lamps hung in each of the seven caves.

On the morning I left Avonar to begin my purification for taking Ven’Dar’s life, I did as was required on the road, gathering power for what was to come. Of course, I had no intention of undergoing the purification rite. Unless something had gone dreadfully awry, Ven’Dar should have slipped safely out of his tower before the fire. He was to meet me in the first cave and lead me to Seri and Paulo and my son.

I almost regretted that I would have no time to try the Pools of Laennara. Though I’d not slain any loyal Dar’Nethi in anger - not yet - a great number had perished because of me. My guilt drew no distinction between warriors sent into battle by my command or enemies slain by my own weapons. Nor could I distinguish between Dar’Nethi blood and the blood of the Zhid. Zhid, too, were Dar’Nethi - changed, made soulless and cruel - but Dar’Nethi just the same. Was I the only one who had ever considered it? My soul could use a cleansing. Yet another death, my own son’s death, was the only purpose in my journey to Laennara. Neither balance nor peace nor purification had anything to do with it.

I followed Bareil past the black latticework gate and through a narrow passage. The tiny flame peeked out of the sides and out from under the gold lid of the luminant, its gleam no bigger than a firefly, doing little to relieve the blackness as it led me onward and downward.

Seri would have hated that passage. A childhood mishap had left her with a terror of dark, confined spaces. Shamed by such “weakness,” she had tried to hide her fear from me when we were first married, not understanding what joy it could give a lover to share such an intimate part of the other… and to be able to soothe it. Ah, gods, Seri… As always when I thought of her any more, rage boiled in my gut and pulsed in my arms, engulfing all other emotion. What could ever soothe the pain of her loss, her death in all but breathing?

Abruptly Bareil and his firefly were swallowed up by a more expansive darkness. I closed off all thought of Seri. I needed to remain clearheaded.

I followed the Dulcé into the larger space and felt his hand on my breast, signaling me to stop. The air was warm and heavy and damp, smelling of old stone with a trace of sulfur, while from somewhere to my right whispered a cool draft. The glimmering light moved to the left, stretching into a wavering beam as the Dulcé removed the lid of the luminant. Bareil, now a small figure sculpted of shadow and light, touched the flame to the wick of a diamond-paned lamp. Soft light reached out and pushed away the shadows just enough for me to view the cave and the Pool of Cleansing.

The cave walls were milky white and yellow, lumps and rills of weeping stone, pockmarked by holes and nooks and niches. Steam hung over the small pool, an irregularly shaped basin no more than twenty paces around. The draft from deep in the caves twined the mists among stalagmites as thick as my wrist.

Bareil awaited me beside the pool, his dark eyes filled with kindness and concern that had never flagged, though I had all but ignored him for three years. As D’Natheil had slowly encroached on my spirit and behavior, I had not bared my soul to Bareil as I had to Ven’Dar. Nor had I ever given the Dulcé permission to speak to the Preceptor on any personal matter. I could not abide the thought of the two discussing my “condition,” so I had shut out my madrissé from all but his most ordinary service, and most especially from the easy intimacy we had shared after Dassine’s death. But he knew more than anyone of the changes in me, and it had never altered his bearing in the slightest. I found that fact inexplicably infuriating.

He held out a folded robe of white wool. “I’ll take your clothing, my lord. You’ll need nothing but this.”

I should have thought to have Bareil bring me a change of clothes, for I still wore the bloodstained shirt and breeches I’d had on for a week. It had seemed foolish to change them before trying to convince the Preceptors that I needed the Rite of Purification. They had examined the freshest stains and identified Ven’Dar’s blood. The Preceptor had insisted on it, there in his tower, while weaving his mysterious plot - the gentlest of teachers, Ven’Dar, opening a vein to slather my knife and my shirt and my hands with his blood. I hadn’t even been capable of closing the wound for him.

Bitterness welled up in my belly. “Put away the robe, Dulcé. You’ll be happy to learn I need no purification rite as yet.” Though it will be soon, I thought. Of their own volition, my hands felt for my sword, and I growled when I found the empty scabbard. Of course, Bareil had ‘ carried my sword and knife into the caves, as ritual forbade me having them during the Rite of Purification. “And you can give me back my weapons. We’ll have to enjoy these pleasantries another time.”

The perplexed Bareil laid the white robe on the floor beside the cloth-wrapped bundle that held my blades. “As you wish, my lord,” he said softly, untying the bundle and pulling away the wrappings. He kept his eyes on his work.

“We’re to meet someone here,” I said. “That’s all. I expected he would be here when we arrived.”

“And so I am.” A figure robed in dark blue stepped from out of the shadows.

“Master Ven’Dar!” Bareil’s head popped up. The newly unwrapped sword clanked on the stone floor.

“Indeed, Dulcé. I’m even more glad to be walking about than for you to see me doing it.”

The Dulcé‘s dark eyes flicked between Ven’Dar and me, filled with unreasonable hopes.

“I’ve given the Preceptor a reprieve,” I said. “Until he proves to me that Seri is safe and Paulo ready to tell me what I must hear from him. Now give me my weapons just in case he reneges on his bargain.”

Better. The unreasonable hopes were gone again. I gestured to Ven’Dar. “If you please, Preceptor… ”

Mist swirled about Ven’Dar as he crossed the cavern to stand close enough to fix his light blue eyes on my own. “Ah, my lord, where are you? You are not the one who must hear what is to be told.”

“Do not toy with me, Ven’Dar. We’ve delayed long enough.”

“I’d hoped my choice as to our meeting ground was unnecessary, but your eyes tell me otherwise. Your wife and your young friend are indeed nearby, but I cannot allow you to come to them except as your true self. There is a healing to be done that only you can attempt.”

“Impossible. You know I can do nothing for anyone.”

I grabbed his arm and exposed the angry wound he’d made in his tower. “I couldn’t even heal this.”

“Then you condemn us all.”

“I never claimed to know how to stop this war! I never asked for this life. I was dead, and Dassine should have left me dead. But as long as I’m here and as long as I’m your prince, I will do what I have to do. And you will do as I command you. Take me to Seri and Paulo.”

“I cannot, my good lord. Not until I know you will listen.”

“Damn your eyes, Ven’Dar… ” I felt like strangling him. He couldn’t have stayed so calm if he’d known how thin the tether that restrained my hand.

But even as I railed, he spoke softly. “I trust you, my lord… I know it is difficult… I understand it is not a matter of will… that’s why I brought you here.”

By the time I really heard what he was saying, I felt as though I’d fought a match in the slave pens of Zhev’Na. My hands were shaking, and I’d thrown my weapons to the far side of the pool to avoid using them. “Stars of night, what do you want of me?”

“I want you to go through the rite.”

“This?” Incredulous, I pointed to the steaming pool.

He raised his eyebrows and shrugged, rubbing his wounded arm gingerly.

I walked over to the pool and stared into the still, murky water of dark green. Steam wreathed my face, depositing a sheen of damp on my skin. “You are no saner than I.”

He stood at my side and gazed into the pool, all his wry humor vanished. “The rite cannot change what is, my lord. You are and will ever be D’Natheil, as well as Karon. But for a thousand years we have used this rite to restore balance in lives skewed so far as to damage the things we love most. It is the only thing I can think of that might counter this anger that consumes you. Don’t you see? If we could but provide you a brief interval of peace, would not that be the time to hear what Paulo has to tell? And perhaps, given that time and peace, you might be able to heal one who is dear to you. If you, in that more equitable state of mind, are still convinced that your son’s death is our only recourse, then at least you will have the comfort of knowing it was Karon who made the choice and not D’Natheil. It is all I can offer you, my lord. I profoundly wish it could be more.”

“I should kill you and be done with it.”

“That you have not is but support for my conviction. Most gratifying.”

I wanted to be rid of D’Natheil. Fifty times over the past few years I had picked up Dassine’s black crystal, the pyramid-shaped implement of my long imprisonment, the artifact that yet held my waiting death, and contemplated touching its smooth surface. Surely release from the prison of this body, this life, would free me from D’Natheil’s unrelenting anger. I had never taken that final step. I had a wife, a son, responsibilities. But if I could ease the Dar’Nethi prince’s influence over me, restore some balance…

“This is idiocy, Ven’Dar. You’ve taken my wife and my prisoner. Men’Thor is to meet me the moment I leave here to plan the assault on Zhev’Na. The fate of two worlds rests in my hand, and you want to give me a bath.”

He held out his hand and smiled. “Seven baths, my lord. May your heart be eased.”

Our histories say the seven pools have existed since the beginning of time, but that in the years leading up to the Catastrophe and the beginning of our terrible war they were rarely used. Their effects were too strange and unsettling. Only in D’Arnath’s time, when the world was forever changed, did the Balancer Laennara discover the benefits of using the seven pools in turn and create the Rite of Purification. Life is, of all things, the most precious to the Dar’Nethi, and the taking of life throws our private worlds out of balance like a reflection of the great Catastrophe. We are very good at dealing with our joys and sorrows, but our guilts can be devastating.

Supposedly the rite was used quite often in D’Arnath’s day, but as time passed and killing grew more common, the custom died away. Most of us dealt with our guilt in other ways. Only for the Heir was the rite ever required.

I knew it was not to be taken lightly. That was why the petitioner always brought a companion, lest the ordeal be too rigorous or too painful. I was a fool, I believed, as I stripped and gave Bareil my clothing, listening to Ven’Dar’s instruction.

“Do not touch the water until you are ready. You must immerse yourself wholly in each pool and remain beneath the surface for at least a steady count of one hundred. The additional time you spend in each pool is your own choice, though I will bring you out if you stay beyond the point of safety. In some pools that is an hour, in some half a day.”

“Half a - how in the name of all gods would I stay underwater for half a day? There is a small matter of breathing.”

“My lord, you are Dar’Nethi, a born enchanter, and one of the most powerful of your race. You have lived beyond death; you can control the chaos between worlds; you can speak in the minds of others, heal broken limbs, torn flesh, and diseased tissue, and you can create light, that most basic wonder of the universe, from your hand. How can you doubt that you can survive a few hours underwater?”

I gave Bareil my undergarments. As the Dulcé bowed and withdrew, I felt naked far beyond the matter of my bare skin. How hot was water that could produce so much steam?

The Preceptor’s hand rested on my shoulder. “Know that I will be within reach of your voice, or your mind’s call, or a signal from your hand at every moment. I will not desert you, my lord. And I will be ready to guide you between the pools and tell you whatever is necessary for the next.”

“And if I wish to end it?”

“You may end it at any time. Depending on how far you’ve gone, it might take some period of days for your mind to restore itself to something like its current state, but it would do so. Better you should go to the end, once you’ve begun.”

“I will be quite vulnerable.” Stupid, stupid to do this.

He stepped aside, leaving me alone at the brink of the pool. “I’ve set the wards on the gate. And Bareil will remain there to watch, as well. No one can enter the caves without our leave.”

I watched Ven’Dar’s hands as he spoke, wondering if he was casting some winding to convince me to do this thing. But the short, capable fingers stayed still. “And the Lords?” I said.

“We are always vulnerable to the Lords. I will be vigilant.”

“Then I - all of us - are in your hands.”

“Trust me, my lord.”

My last friend closed his eyes and whispered an invocation to Vasrin. As he spoke the last word, I filled my lungs and stepped into the Pool of Cleansing.

Searing… scalding… torment… I would have screamed, but the water was already well over my head. I fought for the surface, but I’d plunged so deep… My feet dragged me lower as if they were made of lead. My flesh would be boiled away before I could reach the air.

“Count, my lord Prince! It has been thirteen, fourteen, fifteen… ” The muffled voice came from an immense distance, but the cadence penetrated mind and body with all the force of Ven’Dar’s will.

A hundred counts. Twenty-eight, twenty-nine… Some part of me began to count, while the rest of my resources were devoted to controlling panic. Others have done this. If Ven’Dar wanted you dead, there are a thousand ways he could have managed it. Don’t fight… kick and glide to the surface… fifty-three, fifty-four…

My chest was on fire inside as well as out. The bottom of the pool was dark, but even hotter than at the surface. As I swam toward the green light sparkling at the surface, trailing mosses of green and red floated from the stony basin walls, brushing my skin… seventy-five, seventy-six…

Almost done. There’s nothing here. You should stop this now… you’ve too much to do to waste time in self-indulgent foolery. Ninety, ninety-one… only an arm’s reach from the air.

My lungs strained to bursting. But as I stretched out my hand in a last pull for the surface, the water around it swirled dark, as if I were… bleeding. In horror and disgust, I thrashed it away, only to have more of it leak out of me. Soon blood flowed from my every pore, from hands and arms and legs, from my eyes, my ears, my nose, from under my fingernails.

I never knew when the count passed a hundred, or when my body began using the scalding water instead of air, for I was preoccupied with the dark exudation from my flesh. So much blood… The water scalded my throat and my gut, yet I wished it hotter so as to clean all the blood away. I rubbed and scraped at my skin, gouged my eyes and ears, and still it flowed. Instead of reaching for the surface, I reversed course and swam deeper.

At the bottom of the pool, moss-covered boulders of all sizes lay in a jumble, radiating heat like a blacksmith’s furnace. Soul-sick, weeping scalding tears, I huddled in the dark, mossy depths and prayed the cleansing waters to boil the blood away.

An hour passed. Two. Eternity…

The distant surface of the water appeared as a patch of pale green light. A shadow moved beyond the surface… beckoning… Ven’Dar, reminding me of the passing time. Reluctantly, I kicked from the bottom of the pool. I would stay at the surface only a moment, long enough to tell him how I had to go down again until I was clean.

But as I rose to the top, the water around me bubbled clear. My hand broke the surface, and a strong, cold hand clasped it firmly and pulled me out.

My reddened skin protested the chill in the air as I knelt on the uneven floor beside the pool and coughed up a bucket of water. Someone dropped a robe of soft wool over my shoulders. A hand on my elbow helped me to my feet - not an easy task. Besides my violent shivering, my legs were as limp as soggy bread.

“Only a short way, my lord. Breathe deeply and slowly as we walk. The Pool of Truth lies just beyond the archway.”

A short passage. Ven’Dar carried the luminant. A brief burst of fire and another diamond-paned lamp revealed a cavern rimed with frost and a long, narrow pool of deep blue. Jagged shards of ice protruded from the surface, knife edges glittering in the lamplight. The water could be nothing but glacial. It was all I could do to let Ven’Dar take the robe away. My fingers and toes were already numb.

“Ah, Ven’Dar, I don’t know… ” My throat was raw from the scalding water, my words little more than a rasping whisper.

“Deep breaths, my lord. Count. There are things far worse than the pain your body reports to you. Step in just here where the water is deep, and no ice can cut your skin. Don’t hesitate. Don’t think. Just do it.”

I stepped forward. My nerves exploded in shock as the icy blue waters closed over my head.

“Count, my lord, one, two, three… ”

… four, five, six… I sank into a blue-white sculpture garden, twisted frozen flowers, trees, gargoyles, every fancy of a demented artist who worked in ice rather than stone… twenty-five, twenty-six… Why did they call this one the Pool of Truth? Pool of Ice would be better. Pool of Madness. Pool of Breathless Folly… fifty, fifty-one… My head felt like to split with the cold. I was desperate for breath, my chest rigid, constricted… sixty… impossible…

But as Ven’Dar had warned me, some things are worse than physical pain. Truth lay waiting for me in the frigid depths - the face of every person I had slain, every person I had sent into battle to die, every person I had failed to protect, to save, to heal, all of them depicted in unyielding ice, eyes cold and empty and accusing… Seri’s face was there, so sad and alone, and beside her a newborn infant… Gerick, the child I had abandoned to his fate because I would not compromise my youthful ideals, because I would not fight… And Martin, Tanager, and Julia, our friends who had died for love of me. Dassine and Exeget, Jayereth and Gar’Dena. Gods, there were so many…

Suspended in the frigid water, I drifted from one to the next and touched their cold faces, drowned in guilt and shame and grief. To take life… to be responsible… to throw it away carelessly in anger or vengeance or thoughtless, pious arrogance…

How long I faced my accusers, I could not have said. Long enough that my heart beat with the ponderous pace of a funeral dirge, and the blood in my veins was surely turned to slush. My extremities were dead, my face numb, my heart a lump of ice in my breast. And when the cold and the guilt and the grief became unbearable, and I reached my hand above the surface, I could feel neither the hands that helped me out nor the robe laid over my shoulders. I staggered through the next passage unspeaking, able to walk only from habit rather than from any sensation in legs or feet.

The black waters of the Pool of Darkness lay in perfect stillness, swathed in shadows the diamond-paned lamp could not penetrate. I did not fear it. Darkness was exactly what I wanted. I prayed it would blot out the images of truth frozen into my vision. The water was thick like honey, and I embraced its warmth. It would be easy to make it to the hundred, to force myself to relinquish air and swallow the dark water.

But as I sank into the depths of the pool, I lost myself. Blind in the blackness, I quickly lost track of which way was the surface and which way the bottom. The thick water formed a barrier about me, preventing any part of me from touching any other part. Nor could I feel where the water ended and my skin began. I might have been a loose mind floating in the emptiness of a universe before its creation, alone with myself - both selves - my thoughts and my fear. After a time, set free from any physical containment, thoughts and memories floated away, leaving only fear. And eventually fear, too, dissolved, and nothing at all remained.

Perhaps it was my total emptiness that allowed me to float to the top at last. Gentle hands pulled me out, wrapped me for a moment in dry softness, and led me blind and deaf to the next pool - the Pool of Oblivion. The wrapping was removed again. Warm water swallowed me…

Gray light. A gentle rocking. Soft slurping sounds. Salt on lips and tongue. Throat, nose, eyes stinging…

“Come on, then. Half a day is the most allowed here, and you’re already well beyond.”

I knelt, pressing my head to the cool grit of stone, gagging and coughing weakly on the remnants of the salt water. The robe he laid over my back was damp and chilly now, making me shudder. Lethargy held me to the ground. So much water… such perishing thirst.

Hands grasped one shoulder. “Come, my lord, you mustn’t stop here. It’s farther to go back than to go forward, now. You’ll like this one better - the Pool of Refreshment.”

My companion dragged me to my feet and led me slowly toward the sound of splashing. Dull, mindless, I huddled in my robe, too weak to turn my head as he lit the lamp, illuminating a gigantic cavern with jeweled light. Greens, blues, purple, and silver were reflected from a pool of turbulent water. Water dribbled, dripped, trickled, and splashed on every side: seeping rivulets feeding the pool, a waterfall, its source lost in the heights, a sheer veil of shimmering drops whispering across a wall of green stone. I stood numbly at the pool’s edge, my ears and eyes throbbing painfully with the sounds and colors.

Ven’Dar removed my robe. “Deep breath, my lord. Enjoy yourself.”

He rotated me until my back was to the pool, and then gave me a gentle push. I toppled backward, the shock of the cold water forcing me to inhale just before the water closed over my head.

Through the brittle, shifting surface, I glimpsed a tired smile. “One, two, three… Count, if you remember how.”

Cold. Drifting… seventeen, eighteen… Something tickled my back… my feet. A school of brilliant red-and-orange fish darted past my nose. A warm current bathed my legs and dragged me deeper. The water was so clear… water and light, swirling, teasing, caressing… thirty-one, thirty-two…

Scarcely had the count passed a hundred and my body made the transition to breathing water when I was sucked into the vortex of the waterfall pool and swirled to the blue-green deeps, tumbled past smooth stones of purple and green, a lacework forest of sculpted stone, and a garden of sea flowers… a thousand vivid colors. An eddy tugged at my hair. From a crack in the rocks at the bottom of the pool a small geyser vented a pillar of bubbles that danced around me, as I floated in a hammock woven of lush fronds of water grass. The water that flowed through me bore the tang of new wine and commanded every nerve to wake up and live.

The pool must have extended half a league into the caves. By the time I reached its farthest limit I was swimming on my own, diving deep and rolling over like a dolphin just to feel the flow of the glorious water on my skin. I explored every crevice and eddy as I lazily paddled back to the beginning. There I arched my back and burst through the surface into the cascade, laughing aloud and blowing the water from my mouth in a fountain.

“You’ll have to drag me from this one, my companion,” I said, my voice crackling and strange, brittle like the clank of metal in the air after a storm. “Join me! While away the day.”

Ven’Dar smiled regretfully. “Another day, my lord Prince. Come. Time to press on.”

I practically dragged my weary friend through the passage to the Pool of Memory. “What’s next?”

“Every petitioner I’ve taken through has gotten frisky after the Pool of Refreshment, just when the hours start to weigh on me,” he grumbled as he held the luminant to the diamond-paned lamp. “I would order the pools a different way were I designing them. And I would vent this chamber much better.”

None of the pools had looked so formidable as the Pool of Memory. Thick, yellow-green liquid bubbled in the narrow basin, giving off an acrid yellow smoke that made my eyes water.

“Are you sure of this?” I asked, my exuberance quenched. “Others have entered? Submerged?”

Ven’Dar nodded without expression. “Be of good heart, my lord. We are almost at an end.”

The thought of swallowing the ghastly muck turned my growling stomach. “I was of good heart until we came here.”

With the largest breath I could muster, and the vague hope that my encounter with the Pool of Memory would be exceptionally brief, I stepped from the edge and dropped into the vile mess.

I could bear the heat - vicious, but not quite so fierce as the Pool of Cleansing - but whatever substance gave the water its putrid color and villainous smell caused it to eat its way into the skin. Stinging, abrading like acid in a wound. How could I possibly let it inside me? My count reached eighty, and I had yet to open my eyes.

It was time to end this exercise. Surely I’d gained whatever benefit Ven’Dar required of me. I’d not felt so near myself in at least a year. But I couldn’t remember why… which must be why the Pool of Memory followed the Pool of Refreshment. First reawaken life and sensation, then reimpose the patterns of history. I knew who I was… but why was I here?

So instead of following my instinct and my most profound desire to climb upward and out of the pool, curiosity held me to the count of one hundred. I released my breath and let the foul mess flow into me…

The yellow sludge ate its way through me, inside, outside, body and spirit, reawakening the tale of my life - my lives - twenty-two years as D’Natheil, forty-two as Karon, ten of those dead, a disembodied soul in Dassine’s captivity, and almost six as this strange joining of Prince and Healer. In a moment’s passing all these times were made clear to me, etched into my renewed soul, all the deeds I had done - good and evil together - the words I’d spoken, the faces I’d known, even my own death and rebirth, all laid out in unfiltered clarity. Orderly. Unaltered.

Instinctively I curled into a ball, floating there in the vile yellow stink, as if I were trying to contain it all or prevent its escape… or perhaps protect myself from the intensity of feeling that must surely accompany such a panorama. But, for the moment, only the facts as they had happened floated there with me. In the hot, murky silence, I existed with my past until I uncurled and floated free.

Enough. I was becoming increasingly nauseated in this pool. I reached for the surface, but could not find it.

Relax… drift… make sure which way is up. Now, reach again. Still nothing. My heart beat faster. Easy, easy. Ven’Dar is watching. You are not abandoned here to drown in the past.

There was a pulse to the Pool of Memory, a throbbing life somewhere in its depths, faint when first I entered the pool, but growing in strength as I reached and strained to find my way out. The pulse drew me in a direction that every instinct screamed was wrong. Deeper. Panicked, I thrashed and struggled against the pull, opening my eyes to a dark blotch on a scaly yellow shelf of rock. Though my body cried out for air, I forced myself to keep drawing in the foul liquid. The blotch grew larger - a swirling vortex with a bottomless black center. I could not hold back, and inexorably the sluggish whirlpool swept me into its dark nexus, my head and feet in a tangle.

Some dense, fibrous, elastic material settled about my flailing limbs, squeezing tighter and tighter, until even the turgid yellow of the pool was lost in darkness. The pulsing continued, squeezing the yellow stuff from my body, but leaving me nothing at all to breathe.

In a single, stifling, choking instant of blind terror and despair, I was shot into a pool of cold, sparkling crystal. With my first desperate gulp of the waters of Rebirth came the emotions I had feared - a vast universe of feeling. Love, loneliness, grief, joy - so much joy I had known - all my anger, too, and hatred, and terror, but in proper balance and proportion. In the span of an hour I drowned in the feelings of two lifetimes, feeling them settle into their rightful positions like sand into the crevices of a stone path.

It is the gift of the Dar’Nethi to take in what is dealt by life and see it in its proper perspective against the glorious backdrop of the universe, accepting and savoring the good and bad alike. To view life without blinders can be difficult and fraught with pain, for you are left with no possibility of self-deception, but from the seeing conies our power.

Face down I rode the cool, gentle swells of the pool like flotsam in the tide, letting them carry me at will, forward and back, having no strength left to do otherwise, and no desire. After a while my toe scraped on a rock. I shifted slightly. My feet dragged the rocky bottom, and soon my knees, too. Only then did I crawl, exhausted, onto the pebbled shore.

I remained on all fours, coughing up the water, my arms scarcely able to hold me up, the chill of the cave quickly settling over me and into me. As before, the white robe was laid gently over my shoulders, and a hand reached out to help me to my feet. But the hand was not Ven’Dar’s. It was slender and pale, with long, graceful fingers that looked strong and capable.

I touched the hand, ensuring it was real before I dared look further, but no watery fantasy could be so much of sweet flesh and blood. And so did I look up into the luminous countenance of my beloved Seri, and in weary grief did I weep for the pain I must bring to her beauteous eyes.