Daughter of Ancients (58 page)

“Blessings of life, Lady,” I said, scrambling to my knees. The eerie light from the spinning globe only a few steps away tickled my skin. “Your Grace, all my thanks for saving me. I've been so afraid.”

She motioned me up, her frown showing no sign of royal indulgence. I bounced to my feet.

“I followed him, Lady,” I said, as if my fondest wish was to open my soul to her. “All these weeks, I've suspected him. He seemed so like the boy the Lords trained to become one of them. I was a slave there, Lady, as a child in his house, and I've been waiting to catch him at something to tell me whether or not my eyes were deceiving me. You've seen me spying, I know, but I meant no disrespect for you. And when I saw him sneak into your house tonight—”

“Why did you not tell me what you suspected?” She grabbed my chin and lifted it up so I could not ignore the dangerous storm in her great eyes.

“Your Grace, no one believes those of us who were slaves when we bear witness to the wickedness of the Lords. They want to put the war behind them, and we are accused of stirring up hatreds and imagining old fears come to life. You . . . Dear Lady, you cared for him so, I began to think I must be wrong. I was so young when I lived in Zhev'Na. But after you proclaimed that the Fourth Lord walked in Gondai, I swore that if ever I caught sight of him again, I would deliver him to you. Tonight when I came to visit Papa, I glimpsed the villain in your garden. Please forgive me my cowardly hesitation that left you in such danger.”

I thought my skin must flake away with her examination. “Have you no respect for your father that you come to him in such disarray?” she said after a moment. Her fingers picked at my hair, pulling out dry rose petals, and she brushed at the red dirt ground into my leather vest. “And have you no consideration that you come to him so late of an evening?” Her voice was cool . . . like shellstone.

I shivered. “My lady, call on a Speaker to verify my truth. The young Lord sealed the slave collar on me, and for his training was my father tortured and my brothers murdered. I witnessed the Three devour his eyes and his soul. You cannot believe I would serve him.”

“I don't know quite what to believe. And I've no time to deal with you.” She stepped away abruptly, as if I had vanished from the room. “Ri'Isse, P'Tor, keep the girl here with the Destroyer. I'll return for him as soon as I've declared his condemnation to the Preceptorate. They are expecting it, so matters should move swiftly.”

The bowman bowed. “But we've no more dolemar for the girl, Lady. Have you—?”

“You've no need to bind her. Her physical prowess can scarcely match the two of you, and her own father admits she is not competent in any true Art. She's likely just another gull. At worst, she's his Drudge. Just secure the chamber and keep her here. It is the devil Lord you need to watch. My binding chain held him well before, but his power has grown.”

Extending one hand, D'Sanya pointed a finger at a glinting arc of metal embedded in the tiles. The narrow silver band formed part of a complete circle—a permanent portal frame—and she stood in its center. “Be alert, Ri'Isse. I'll reopen this portal when I'm ready for him.”

Sweeping her hand around the gleaming circle, she constructed her magical enclosure, and in only moments, a tremulous oval appeared. Even depleted by her struggle with Gerick, the surging power was startling, disorienting, nauseating. As the portal vanished, I felt hopeless as I had not in days. What, in the name of sense, was I to do now?

The two guardsmen, wearing the white-and-gold livery of the Heir, moved efficiently to their duties. While Ri'-Isse the bowman took up a guardsman's stance beside Gerick—hand on his sword hilt, feet apart, balanced, relaxed, and ready—his older companion shot the two sturdy bolts on the door to the passageway and applied some magical working to them. My flesh stung as if I'd been struck with a riding crop.

P'Tor moved across the room to the window, shoved the half-ruined casements open wider, and leaned out. “All's quiet. No one abroad,” he called over his shoulder.

I moved toward the corner where Gerick hung suspended like an abandoned string puppet. I was not quite sure why I did so, except that I needed to get farther away from the oculus. The spinning sounded like the contemptuous hiss of the Zhid, evoking images that made my blood run hot and cold.

“Just sit right there on the floor, girl,” said Ri'Isse, pointing to the dark-colored tiles at my feet, halfway between Gerick and the oculus. “Give us any trouble, and we'll chain you up like the devil.”

“Please, sir, I feel . . . sick. . . .” I stepped closer to him.

Truly my head was horribly muddled. The world felt wrong. The older man was working some protective magic on the gaping window openings, and it grated on my skin like a carpenter's rasp.

Only two of them. They perceive no threat. Certain advantage . . .
Another step. I pressed the heel of my left hand to my forehead; pain pierced the spot between my eyes like a lance, as I imagined lightning bolts shooting from my fingertips . . .
The soldier dropped the metal bar on the floor. Where is it?
My right arm lay across my stomach as if I were sick. My fingers flexed.
Death lies in these hands . . . power for the taking
. Something monstrous and horrible burned in my belly.
No! You know other ways . . . stay in control. Move.

What was happening? What was I thinking? Another step closer. “Please, sir, I just need . . .” I slammed my knee into the bowman's groin.

He yelled and doubled over. The other man streaked toward us, one hand holding a knife, the other fumbling at his sword. Poor Ri'Isse was still retching when I grabbed his tabard at the shoulders, straightened him up, spun him a half-turn, and shoved him into his comrade. The two crashed heavily to the floor, the heavier bowman square atop the smaller man.

Staying clear of their flailing limbs, I kicked the wiry man's knife from his hand, retreated a few steps, and snatched up the brass bar from under the edge of the worktable where it had rolled when discarded. Gripping it with two hands, I raised it over the fallen men. “Stay down!”

But the pale bowman had caught his breath at last, and with a murderous glare he lunged forward and up, growling through gritted teeth. Before he could get to his feet, I crashed the bar into his forehead. Insensible, he sagged back onto his unlucky partner.

The wiry P'Tor had managed to roll sideways and get to all fours before Ri'Isse flattened him again, but despite the bowman's dead weight, he kept scrabbling forward and would soon break free. I dropped my own weight onto the pile, straddling the unconscious bowman's belly. Retrieving my knife from Ri'Isse's belt, I plunged it into the back of the squirming guardsman's thigh. He cursed and fought harder to extricate himself from the pile, but I twisted the knife until he screamed and fell limp.

I released the knife hilt and stared at my bloody hand. How was this possible? I had never stabbed another person in my life . . . never made such moves. My shoulder ached as I climbed to my feet. My fingers tingled, half numb, yet I had no sooner persuaded them to wriggle than my vision blurred and I felt completely disoriented, as if someone had thrown sand in my eyes and spun me around. I staggered forward trying to keep my balance. This was not the oculus enchantment, but something new. Rubbing my eyes and forcing them to focus, I whipped my head around to see the bowman's limp body rolling off the wiry guardsman's back.

“Down on the floor,” I yelled, stomping on P'Tor's outstretched hand as it wove his pitiful enchantment. “On your face! Now!”

“Damnable, traitorous witch . . .”

I slammed my boot into his wounded thigh, close to the knife. He screamed and dropped to his belly, his magic withering.

“Don't think to use any trickery on me,” I said. I wrenched away the short sword gripped in his left hand and pulled my knife from his thigh. “Stay down and keep both hands where I can see them or I'll cut them off.”

A quarter of an hour later, after a number of threats and a few persuasive kicks, the two guardsmen were bound securely with straps from D'Sanya's bundles and bags, and I was cutting the silver cord that bound Gerick . . . that bound me. For the truth had dawned on me at last, that I was once again both of us.

Even if D'Sanya hadn't brought in reinforcements, I had been very unlikely to best her in hand-to-hand sorcery. My power had surprised her, giving me leverage in the combat just as an ambush gives an early advantage in a physical trial. But by the time a flaming arrow flew over my head, warning me that someone had attacked me from behind, I was already in serious difficulty. At that moment I would have sworn my skin was melting and the underlying tissue oozing away in great greasy globs.

The only dueling enchantments I could manage as I juggled this new kind of power-gathering were rudimentary magical simulations of standard weapons combat: stabbing, hacking, grappling, and so on. And though I felt as if I could generate power enough to support these workings, the flow as I fed them was rough and uneven, leaving both attacks and defenses ineffective and easily countered.

I felt the first man come up behind me, and while attempting to hold a defensive screen between me and D'Sanya, I spun around and slammed the side of one hand into his throat. The heel of my other hand smashed into his chest, silencing his strangled bubbling and sending him to the floor. D'Sanya, ready and waiting for me to be distracted, picked just that moment to entangle me in an enchantment I had no ability to counter. It blurred my vision so that I couldn't tell whether there were four men or forty coming at me. The battle was lost, and I knew D'Sanya would make sure of her threats this time. I had to withdraw and try something else, and I had best be quick about it.

Jen's body didn't give me much to work with, and to accommodate her different shape and balance challenged my ability to adapt. But her spirit . . . I was already in awe of that. How could such an unkempt sprig of a woman, possessing no true talent and all the magical power of a nine-year-old child, goad, coerce, or sting me into wielding a kind of power I had believed myself incapable of?

When I abandoned my soon-to-be-captive body and joined with her again, I found her ready to take on D'Sanya and her soldiers, whether I was with her or not. That made it easier to do what I had to do—take control of her slight limbs, infuse her with my own skills, and batter two men insensible. Though she had no power to deny anything I demanded of her body, and though my instincts and training insisted I make sure of our captors, I couldn't kill them. Not with Jen's hands.

To yield control of a body once I had taken full possession was always difficult. The mind clings to the senses, to breathing, to a beating heart. The same fundamental urge that drives a soul to hold on to life through pain and peril demanded I stay where I was, not shrink into a quiet corner of Jen's soul and allow her to use my capabilities as she chose. But we had yet to destroy the oculus. And whereas Jen sensed the oculus enchantments as an iron yoke laid on her shoulders and a pall upon her mind, I felt a fiery liquor in my veins. The smell of the guardsman's blood brewed an intoxicating poison that threatened to erase all sense of decency and moderation. Afraid that I might falter in our task . . . or relish it . . . I gave Jen back her will.

Our thoughts collided and bounced off each other like raindrops on pavement. My urgency. Her steadiness. My dread of the outcome. Her shame at her lack of talent and her determination to overcome it. The time of transition between full control and simple joining is when it is most difficult to keep the two souls separate and to avoid intrusion.

Unsure if we were yet joined, she looked down at the body she had released from D'Sanya's bindings. Infinitely strange to see myself lying there like a dead man who just happened to inhale now and then. Jen wasn't afraid of me any more. But the fighting revolted her.

I tried not to listen to her thoughts, only observe through her eyes and stay afloat in the tides of her emotions, so I would know if she needed me to take a more active role. She laid out her possessions on the worktable and retrieved the tongs and the saw. Fear and dread surged through her as she used the tongs to snatch the oculus from its cabinet. Her skin felt scored by knives. But I felt no faltering of will. She dropped the shining ring on the worktable and began shaping her enchantment. Deliberate. Careful.

Trying to control my impatience, I considered the things Jen had done in the desert and at Aimee's house. Her courage and determination humbled me. So many Dar'Nethi feared me, but few with so much reason as this woman. And she had uncovered my own worst fear. I could not rid myself of the image of the Zhid armies in the north and east, marching toward Avonar marshaled by an avantir, answering the call of the Lords. Were the Three truly dead if their desires yet moved their servants . . . their instruments?
Destroyer . . .
The name had festered in my soul for five years.

Jen fixed a U-shaped clamp from D'Sanya's tools to hold the oculus and took up the metal-cutting saw. The defenses of the oculus battered her with uncertainty and doubt. I offered what confidence and strength I could, and forced her to keep her arm moving though it pained her shoulder. Once the saw had bitten a notch in the smooth ring, I retreated again and allowed her to complete her magical construction, encompassing desire and will and transformation . . . and a resonating grief for the pain and death we would cause. As she reached for power to accomplish it, suppressed sobs shook her slight body.