Daughter of Ancients (39 page)

“And theirs for him?”

“Indeed. I would give a great deal to help them find him. Master Je'Reint says my Imaging helps him locate Zhid sentries and outposts—he is very kind, of course. But my studies of military history and strategy and the geography of Gondai give me the basic material to work with. I've no such grounding that could tell me where Lady D'Sanya might have taken Gerick.”

I propped my back on the window frame and watched Lady Seriana and Paulo shaking their heads. “She said she would bury him in the place where he was ‘hatched.' Surely they don't think she would take him across the Bridge.”

Aimee turned toward the others, as well, as if she could see them puzzling over this dilemma. “No. Lady Seriana has concluded that D'Sanya will take him to Zhev'Na—that it was his ‘birth' as a Lord to which the Lady was referring. But reports say that the temple where he was changed and all the fortress buildings have fallen. Now they're trying to determine the location of the desert camps where he was trained to command.”

“I'd think it more likely the Lady meant the underground chambers at Zhev'Na: the Chamber of the Great Oculus or the Vault of the Skull or Notole's den right next to it. Those couldn't have ‘fallen' like the rest of the fortress.”

“You know these places?”

“I know every place in Zhev'Na. I lived there for six years. In the Lords' house itself for a good part of that time. I've a very good memory, even in cases where I'd prefer not.”

“Perhaps—”Aimee bit her lip. “I know you're anxious to leave, but if you could help them make a map . . . You see, it is . . . Master Gerick's friend . . . who is to go after him. He was only in the Lords' house one time. It will be such a danger. What if these Zhid have occupied it again? Or if the Lady herself is there? He must be quick and sure.”

“They can't mean for him to go alone. And him not even Dar'Nethi. It's lunacy.”

“But they've no one else. With the Zhid on the march, no one can be spared. Prince Ven'Dar, who would gladly have found someone trustworthy to accompany Master Paulo, is gone away, and Commander Je'Reint is burdened with the defense of the city and the raising of troops. No Dar'Nethi would be willing to help Master Gerick, and we've no time to explain the truth to them.”

“Well,
I'll
go then. A mundane can't bumble into Zhev'Na alone.” Only when the two at the table fell instantly silent, staring at me as if I'd said I was going to eat the moon, did I realize that I'd blurted out this absurdity at full volume.

Aimee's face blossomed with a radiant smile. “Bless you,” she said, quietly enough that the others couldn't hear it. I wasn't sure I was supposed to hear it either. She took my arm and dragged me across the room to join the others.

Why in the name of sense had I done it? As Aimee repeated my offer and, after asking my permission, explained why I was not summoned to war, Lady Seriana and Paulo acted as if I'd taken leave of my senses—or as if I had some less-than-benevolent purpose.

“You're good to offer,” said the woman. “But I couldn't ask it.” The room was suddenly so chilly, I needed a cloak and gloves.

“It's not just so I can kill him, if that's what you think,” I said.

“No, of course not.” But her cheeks flushed just enough that I knew she'd considered it.

“And it is not a matter of your letting me or not letting me. I choose for myself. But if all you say is true, you can hardly refuse my help. You believe the safety of Avonar depends on finding out the truth about the Lady, which could depend in great measure on finding your son. I am a true daughter of Avonar. I lived in the Lords' house. I know where to look for him.”

“I can find my own way about.” Paulo wasn't happy, either.

“Fine,” I said. “But will you be able to tell if spell traps have been laid? The ruins of Zhev'Na are not a place to blunder in with great big feet and kick over the stones to find what you're looking for. I've more experience and skill than you'll get from anyone else available.”

“Indeed, you must let Jen help you,” chimed in Aimee. “I've heard frightful reports of the ruins. Some say they're haunted, that those who venture within never return, or if they do, then they're never the same. You mustn't risk your safety by going less than fully armed, good sir.”

Well, he wasn't going to refuse a plea like that. But he scowled at me, and I could guess what he was thinking.

“Indeed, thanks to your friend and the Lords, I have no true talent,” I said. “But I do have the same capabilities as every Dar'Nethi: I can call fire, detect enchantments, and hide things—and people—reasonably well if I have no wish for them to be seen. As you can't do these things yourself, you're probably the only person in Avonar who could find my paltry skills useful. Therefore I shall suit you very well. And, of course, whether or not you wish me to come, I shall follow you anyway.”

What a silly thing to say. Sometimes I wished I could stop talking altogether.

Lady Seriana warmed a bit at my outburst, smiling as if she understood exactly what I was feeling, which I found quite annoying just when I was doing my best to understand that very thing and having no luck at all. I was determined to go and couldn't say why. But like the mule to which my brothers had so often compared me, I plodded ahead. “And someone ought to be making plans for all those people in the hospice. If the power that keeps them well comes from Lady D'Sanya, and if we believe her power is a danger to Avonar, whether she intends it or not—”

“I am going there myself,” said Lady Seriana, all her smiles vanished. “From what you've told us, Gerick's game is up, and therefore Karon's, too. I need to be with him whatever comes.”

“You mustn't go there before your son is free, my lady,” said Aimee without the least trace of embarrassment at contradicting the formidable Lady Seriana. “Lady D'Sanya must have no reason to suspect we know what she's done. Difficult though it may be, you have to wait.”

Lady Seriana folded her arms in front of her as if she were going to argue. But instead she looked at Paulo, who was still tracing a finger over a map. “Twenty-one days,” she said. “That's the least, you said?”

Paulo glanced up. “Aye. It's still desert between here and there.”

“Twenty-one days and I go to Karon.”

He agreed and went back to the map.

“I'll send the Healer, T'Laven, to tell Karon what's happened,” she said to Aimee and me. “If you wish, I'll have him take a message to your father as well. And when I go, I'll do whatever I can for his well-being.”

“That would be very kind.”

I drew her a map of the hospice. Paulo showed her how to find her husband's apartments, and I showed her how to find my father. “He'll be happy to see you,” I said. “He's been waiting a long time.”

She looked puzzled.

“Perhaps you remember him. His name is Sefaro.”

It is always a pleasure to astonish someone so proud as the Lady Seriana.

“D'Sanya . . . please . . .” My tongue felt like a lizard, rough and too thick for my dry mouth. “Don't leave me with the oculus.” Even before she had transported me through the quivering air of a portal to this unknown prison, I had been unable to see anything but the brass ring, the burning, nauseating swirl of purple-and-gold light that she had made the entirety of my visual world.

The determined chink of hammer on stone ceased. “You must have sufficient time to know the horrors you've wrought on Gondai. It is the only justice fit for a Lord of Zhev'Na. And only the oculus can focus my power enough to contain a Lord. Yet another crime to your tally: The hospice in Maroth will be delayed for months and months until I can make another one.” Her voice stayed soft and calmly reasoned as she meted out her mad justice. “Now try to move your arm.”

I lay on my back on cold stone, my arms straight at my sides. Indeed, some degree of control had returned to my left arm, paralyzed for this immeasurable time. A physical restraint about my wrist had replaced the enchantment, however, and I needed no prompting to test it thoroughly. But the struggle to break free of her binding was no more effectual than my protestations of love or my reasoned arguments had been.

I should have been prepared for her reaction to my revelation. No sooner had I told her that her thousand-year dream of redemption was a myth, than my scarred hands gave her evidence that I was the very architect of her ruin—I, the Lord of Zhev'Na. Her power was tremendous even without the oculus, and when she used the device to focus her rage, my meager defenses were smothered like a flea in an avalanche. I was soon hanging in the corner of her lectorium, listening helplessly as she prepared the first of my punishments. And what came after . . . I kept thinking, as far as I was capable of thought, that if I could only push her a little further, she might kill me outright. But goading had only made matters worse.

She patted my straining arm. “Good. Now to ensure that your attention stays on your crimes.”

A sharp stab in my open palm sent a flood of fire through my right hand and wrist and up my arm. Odd images, fragments of memory—faces, book pages, a castle parapet—flashed through my inner vision, distracting me for a while from the hammer that was now chinking away on my left side.

“I would have confined you in Skygazer's Needle—a perfect prison—but I thought it more fitting that you lie here with the ghosts of your mentors.”

Another stabbing pain, this time in the left hand. Another flood of fire. More images . . . so vivid . . .

 

 

The waves of enchantment from right and left clashed somewhere between my ribs, searing my lungs and threatening to stop my heart. I fought for breath. “Lady, what are you doing?”

 

Scrabbling my way out of the insistent vision, I grasped at reality—the swirl of brilliance hanging over me and the chinking inevitability of D'Sanya's hammer as it forged my prison. Even if I had been willing to gather power in the way of the Lords, D'Sanya's enchantments had left me incapable of sorcery. That I had been able to aid Sefaro's nosy daughter and plant in her the compulsion to go to my mother was only a virtue of my soul weaving. D'Sanya's constraints did not seem to affect that talent, perhaps because she did not know of it, or perhaps a talent detached from a body could not be fully bound by physical constraints. But here, wherever we were, my feeble attempts to touch another soul came up empty. And I dared not enter D'Sanya. She was too strong. Too angry. More than half mad.

“D'Sanya, wait . . .” Chinking by my left foot. What was she doing to me? Every moment that passed made it harder to think clearly. Piercing fire blossomed in my foot and washed up my leg and through my groin and my gnawing gut.

 

 

A stab in my right foot. Leg, back, and belly flushed with the stinging enchantment. At the same time, the lower perimeters of my limbs and torso and the flesh at the back of my neck tickled as if an army of ants milled about beneath me, burrowing into my skin. The chinking hammer next to my ear tugged at a binding that crossed my forehead. . . .

 

 

Gasping like one drowning, I tried to escape that voice, those sensations.

The voice that whispered in my ear so seductively was Lord Parven's, as clear as on the day of my change. Visions . . . memories . . . so real . . .

“Lady!” D'Sanya had threatened to bury me alive, but terror rooted deeper than even so dread a fate exploded in my gut. My struggle drove her sharp pins deeper into my hands and feet, triggering relentless waves of fire. The Lords were five years dead, but if my soul weaving could give coherence to chaos and create the Bounded, what could it do to the memories I carried . . . and in the presence of the oculus, the very agent of my corruption?
You will not escape the destiny we designed for you. You are our instrument. Our Fourth.