Bridge of Dreams (23 page)

Her hand went lax. He listened to her breathing even out into what he hoped would be a healing sleep. Then he sat back and thought about the people he was growing to care about here—and the people he’d left behind.

Danyal walked down the street where Zhahar lived. Thin ice. Black slush. Dead trees. Spring flowers withering as they tried to grow.

He hoped it hadn’t felt that way all the time Zhahar had lived here.

His white robe told everyone watching from the street or doorways what he was. Some made a sign of blessing. An equal number saw him and, shrinking back, made a sign against evil.

What else had walked this street recently, hiding what it was? Or pretending to be something that it wasn’t?

In a few more days, he wasn’t sure any Shaman would be able to see this street anymore. Something else he needed to report to the Council.

When he reached the building where Zhahar had her rooms, he left Denys to watch the pony and cart while he and Nik took traveling bags and carry sacks up the stairs to Zhahar’s rooms.

Their rooms? She had, after all, lived here with her sisters.

Not much left behind
, he thought as he scanned the front room and the little cooking area. But enough.

“Start with the books,” he told Nik. “I’ll pack up the other room.”

When he opened the dresser drawers and saw the underclothes, he wished he had brought Kobrah. Not because women’s underclothes were unfamiliar—as he’d told Lee, Shamans weren’t celibate—but because he could picture Zhahar’s embarrassment that he’d seen what was intimate.

Then he picked up a carving and knew she wouldn’t fear him seeing her underclothes, but this.

A triangle of wood as high as his forefinger. On each side, a woman’s face. The faces were similar to each other, enough that one would call them sisters, but different enough not to be the same woman with different expressions. No, this…

Body, heart, and mind
, he thought, turning the wood as he studied each face and decided what the expression represented.
Or body, heart, and spirit?
Pushing aside the underclothes, he found a flat piece of wood with a picture burned into it. Another woman’s face, but she had a third eye in her forehead.

That
represented spirit. Maybe wisdom as well?

He wrapped them in underclothes and tucked them into the travel bag.

Why wood? Was that the usual medium for the sacred symbols of Zhahar’s people? Or were these made of wood because they could be burned if someone got too close to suspecting the truth? Whatever that was.

Lee said her name was Sholeh Zeela a Zhahar. One person with the name of all three sisters?

She hadn’t been honest with him, and that scratched. He was chosen for difficult assignments because he
could
be trusted,
was
trusted.

It all came down to trust, didn’t it?

The Shaman Council had made him the Asylum Keeper here because they’d said he was needed, that the city of Vision was going to need a bridge to span the distance between people.

As he checked every drawer and packed everything he could find, Danyal wondered if the council had sent him to the Asylum to be that bridge, or if they had sent him there because he would be trusted by the man who
could
span the distance between people.

Z
hahar slowly came into view, careful not to disturb the bandages. The stitches were only in Zeela’s body, although she could feel them under her own skin, a sign that Zeela was still borrowing strength from her aspect. But the bandages, like clothes, had to be worn by all of them, or they wouldn’t be there for Zeela when she came into view.

Soft light came through the screened window, but not a breath of air. The heat in the small room was a weight against Zhahar’s skin, and she desperately wanted to slip away to the bathing room and soak in a tub of cool water for a while.

A shape stirred in the chair, drew in a breath.

“Hey-a,” Lee said, sounding sleepy. He leaned forward, reaching until his fingers brushed against her hand. “How are you feeling?”

“It’s Zhahar.”

“I know.”

“You can tell just by touching my hand?”

“You feel different from your sisters. You smell different.”

Feeling self-conscious because she was pretty sure she stank right now, she pushed herself up and eased her legs over the side of the bed—and was
glad Lee couldn’t see her wince from the effort. “We all use the same soap.” And had argued for an hour in the shop while trying to find a scent all three of them liked because they could afford only one.

“It smells a little different on each of you.” Lee sat back and smiled. “A bit tart on Zeela; sweeter on Sholeh. Just right on you.”

She didn’t know what to say.

“Would you like some broth?”

Now
she knew what to say. “Sholeh had beans and rice with chicken. And she had
two
servings of the sweet.” Unfortunately, even to her own ears, she sounded pouty when she said it.

“Sholeh doesn’t have a wound that’s showing through,” Lee replied with enough bite to make her wary. “However, Kobrah said you liked those dishes, so she set some aside for you. But I’m not sure you want them for breakfast.”

“I’m hungry. I wouldn’t mind.” She looked at the window and frowned. She remembered Sholeh telling her about the meal—and the odd wobble that was close to panic in her youngest sister’s voice. She remembered keeping her aspect close enough to Zeela’s to feel someone wiping down arms and legs to ease the fever, and wished she could feel that cool cloth on her own skin. She remembered hearing Lee and Danyal talking but couldn’t recall what they had said. Hearing Kobrah. Hearing Benham.

“Yesterday morning,” Lee said.

“What?”

“I can see you well enough to know you’re looking at the window, so you’re probably wondering how much time has passed since Sholeh knocked on my door. That was yesterday morning. You’ve hardly been in view, and when you have been, you sounded punch-drunk.”

His voice had that bite again that she finally realized was caused by an effort to control his temper.

“Sholeh did pretty well for the first few hours, but when it became apparent that you and Zeela were so removed you weren’t responding to anyone, even her…” He huffed out a sigh. “The last time Zeela came into view, her fever broke. Benham checked the stitches and put on a clean dressing. You came into view about an hour after that, long enough to drink a
glass of water. We haven’t seen you since. Sholeh surfaced a few times to use the toilet or drink some water, but she disappeared after Benham suggested a sedative. She probably needed one, but she was afraid it might harm Zeela.”

“You don’t understand about us.”

“And that’s going to change,” Lee snapped. “Living in this city is too dangerous if
no one
knows how to help you when you’re in trouble.”

“What would you have me do?” Her voice was low but fierce. “My homeland is at stake. My
people
are at stake.”

“Right now, your
sisters
are at stake.”

A hazy awareness from Zeela. Sholeh coming close enough to the surface to listen.

“You don’t understand,” she said.

“Two-faced.”

She and Sholeh gasped from the pain those words caused. Zeela moaned.

Lee braced his forearms on his thighs.

“Two-faced,” he said again, his voice so full of understanding her eyes stung with tears. “It means one member of a Tryad is lost, doesn’t it? It means someone made a hard choice. I’ve had a lot of time to think while I’ve been sitting here, Sholeh Zeela a Zhahar. One who is three. Three who are one. I’m guessing if one of you gets a knife in the heart, all of you die. I’m not sure about other things that would kill a different kind of person, but you might be able to survive a lot of injuries if you let the injured sibling die—or, more likely, if the injured sibling chooses to die to save the other two. Catastrophic damage. That’s what it would take, wouldn’t it? Something that would threaten the welfare of the other two to the point of death or permanent injury. It has happened often enough that your people have a word for it.”

“Stop,” she whispered as tears ran down her face.

Instead he took her hands in his, giving her someone to hold on to who didn’t need her to be strong.

“I don’t understand how you can be physically different in some ways and the same in others, but I’d say you’ve been supporting Zeela since she
got you back to your rooms after the fight. That’s why the wound is showing through on you. That’s why you’ve sounded so dazed.”

She heard Sholeh crying and wondered if Lee heard it too.

“If something happens…” She hesitated, but it had to be said. “Sholeh can’t handle the one-face world on her own. She’s smart, she really is, but she’s more fragile than Zeela and me.”
And if we don’t make it…

“Yes, she’s smart. Yes, she’s more fragile. And there are places where she would do just fine.”

That bite in his voice again.

“But that’s a discussion for another day,” Lee continued, “because Zeela’s wound is healing, and you don’t have to hold on so tight it makes you ill. The best thing you can do for Zeela now is help yourself.”

=He’s right,= Zeela whispered.

::Please listen to him, Zhahar,:: Sholeh pleaded.

She slipped her hands out of his and rubbed the tears off her face.

“Why do you understand so much about us when you don’t know us?” she asked.

“Like I said, I’ve had a lot of time to think while I’ve been watching over you,” he replied. “I realized I know a few things about being in a triad.”

Sweat trickled between her breasts and the heat in the air made it hard to breathe, but she wouldn’t have moved for any reason. Not then. “How?”

“I’ve been one side of two triads,” Lee said. “My father disappeared when I was very young, so it’s been my mother, my sister, and me. There were secrets about our lineage that had to be kept for Glorianna’s safety. Mine too, but mostly hers. My mother and sister are Landscapers; I’m a Bridge. Besides being family, I had a working partnership with both of them. While other Bridges traveled through my mother’s landscapes, I was the
only
Bridge who worked with Glorianna.”

“Because of the secrets?”

He nodded. “The other triad was Glorianna, our cousin Sebastian, and me. Sebastian is a few months younger than Glorianna and two years older than me. He wasn’t accepted by other children in the daylight landscapes because he’s an incubus, and while Glorianna and I had friends in the
village where we lived, there was no one we could completely trust except Sebastian.”

She had never considered that people who were not one could form such bonds.

“Then Glorianna met Michael, and everything changed,” Lee continued. “It didn’t change when Sebastian met Lynnea, but it changed when the Magician came into our lives.”

“Your triad changed,” Zhahar said, trying to understand how that would feel.

“For a little while, when Glorianna, Michael, and I were traveling, we were…connected. But in the end, the triad that formed was Glorianna, Michael, and Sebastian, and I became an outsider. Or, at least, I felt like one.”

The pain of that truth showed in his face.

He sighed. “I understand the choice, Zhahar. I do. The wizards still want to destroy my sister, and they wouldn’t hesitate to kill my mother too. When I stumbled across them and some of their men, they were in one of my mother’s landscapes and less than a mile from a bridge that might have provided some of them with access to one of my sister’s landscapes. So I used my abilities as a Bridge to get those men away from my family. I got them far away from my sister. I didn’t expect to end up like this”— he raised a hand to indicate his eyes—“but I chose to sacrifice myself in order to save them.”

She studied his face. Something more. Some deep hurt that was still inside him, despite his daily visits to the temple.

“What happened to your sister, Lee?”

He drew in a shaky breath. “She was a…The only word you have for it is meant as an insult.”

No, they just hadn’t shared the respectful alternative with him.

“She had a single aspect,” Zhahar said gently.

“Yes. She had a single aspect. And now she is split into two.”

Zhahar gasped. So did Sholeh. Even Zeela, who was drifting in and out, sucked in a pained breath.

“Who did such a thing to her?” they asked.

Lee’s smile was regretful and bitter. “She did it to herself. To save the world, she did it to herself.” Tears filled his eyes. “And as much as I love my sister, I haven’t been able to accept what she’s become.”

“If you can accept us, why can’t you accept her?” Zhahar asked.

“Because one part of what she’s become frightens me,” he whispered.

But that part of her doesn’t frighten Michael and Sebastian
, she thought, understanding why the new triad formed.
Or even if it does, they can still accept.

Lee let out a shaky sigh. “Enough. You need to get some food.”