Daughter of Ancients (69 page)

Outside the tall window it was day, though billowing fog left the sun a gray disk as it hovered over a ghostly horizon—west, certainly, from the shape of it. Had the world truly spun a complete revolution since I'd stood in the colonnade and watched D'Sanya ride out of the palace? But then who would expect time to make sense? The Bridge had fallen, and the earth had shaken for so long my teeth felt loose in my head.

We seemed to be on the third or fourth floor of a large house. Below the window spread a wide lawn, hedges, and a long, low building painted white with a fenced yard behind it—a stable, perhaps. I yanked up the stiff old sash, stuck my head out, and inhaled . . . and started coughing. Smoke, not fog.

The city was quiet now, as it had not been those endless hours ago when Ven'Dar had made a portal to take us from Skygazer's Needle into the palace. By the time he had found loyal men to reinforce the weaknesses Gerick had revealed to me, the Zhid had brought up a ram to smash the palace gates. A few had made it past the walls and the enchantments and were battling the defenders. If an entire day had passed, then who had won the battle for Avonar? The silence and smoke shivered along my back. Perhaps everyone was dead.

Behind me, the bed creaked. I scraped my arm on the window frame in my hurry to look around.

Eyes still closed, Gerick had rolled to his side, clutching the blanket tight around his neck. His trembling shook the small bed and the floor. The striped blanket slipped slowly to the floor, exposing his sodden boots and breeches.

I felt helpless. What had he done to himself with his monstrous magics?

Idiot! This isn't enchantment or madness. He's lost a vat of blood, has likely not eaten or slept for two days, and is soaking wet.
Enough to deplete anyone, even if he'd not just expended magical power unseen in ages of the world. He was freezing.

I dragged off his boots and leggings and threw the blanket back over him. As I dug in the chest through books and bundles and spilled sonquey tiles in search of blankets and dry clothes, I tried to think what I might possibly say were he ever to wake up.
Is it part of your devilish scheme to plant conviction of your innocence in my head along with your messages, your soul, and whatever else you see fit to put there? What perversion makes me so sure of you, even after you've broken the world? I hate this madness you've put in me, when I know I should put a knife in your heart again, and leave it this time. Tell me what, in Vasrin's mighty shaping, you've done to the world. To me.

The chest yielded only a man's linen—worn, but clean. No other clothes. No more blankets. I returned to the bed, and yanked and tugged the bedclothes trapped underneath him until I could flop the thick, slightly damp quilt and linen sheet over the top of the striped blanket. After a quick glance at his face to confirm he was yet insensible, I reached underneath the bedclothes to fumble with the waist buttons on his breeches.

A cold hand clamped around my wrist, twisting just enough that I was forced to let go of his clothes, kneel down beside the bed, and look him in the eyes—deep brown eyes, open pathways to a soul filled with painful questions.

“F . . . f . . . first things first.” His teeth were chattering. “T . . . t . . . tell me what I am, Jen. Please. You always see the truth.”

One might have thought the battle fires had reached this room and set my skin ablaze. Before answering, I retrieved my hand and sat back on my heels, putting slightly more distance between us so I could breathe. He relinquished my appendage without argument, but not so my eyes.

“I don't know what you are,” I said. “The Bridge is no more. The Gate's gone dark. Some kind of barrier—crystal or glass—exists in its place. As to the world . . . the war . . . I don't know that either. Ven'Dar and I are alive, and we're not Zhid. For the moment, he is capable of using power. That's something at least. The prince says that others live. The Lady survived, but seems . . .”

He nodded, his serious expression unchanged. “Truth broke her. I should have let
you
face her long ago.”

Unable to comprehend his meaning, I could not remember what I was saying. “I don't know any more to tell you. Someone's bringing food and medicine. We'll look at your shoulder.”

“Just cold now.” He hunched his quivering shoulders and averted his eyes. “Thank you . . . for believing.”

“But I didn't—”

“Felt it the whole time. Remembered what you said; didn't hold back.”

So he had used my advice to destroy the Bridge. I wanted to throw something, to explode something. But all I did was yell at him. “How could you do it? I defended you! Yes, I believed in you, but I don't know why, and I still believe in you, but I think I must be mad or corrupt, a traitor to everything and everyone I've ever cared about. Tell me why you did it!”

He swung his legs around to the side of the bed, set his bare feet on the floor, and sat up, chin drooping on his chest as he gathered the bedclothes around him. His eyelids sagged as his violent shaking eased into gentler tremors. For a few moments, I thought he had passed out and might topple onto the floor. I dared not touch him.

After a brief time, he heaved a deep, tremulous sigh. Shrugging off the blankets, he reached for the muddy leggings and boots I had left by the bed.

“I did what I believed necessary,” he said, pulling the black hose over his legs with hands that were increasingly steady. “But I don't have time to explain right now. They're going to come for me—the Dar'Nethi, the Preceptors . . . whoever's left. I'll let them do whatever they want with me. I'll help, if they'll allow it . . . if I can. But I must get to the hospice first. My father's dying.”

“Are you going to play Lord again? Have you forgotten the firestorm you brought down on Avonar? The Zhid legions that stretch like an ocean all the way to the borders? How do you expect—?”

His glance halted my accusations as decisively as he cinched the buckle on his left boot. His face shone like the horizon just before the sun pushes itself above its boundary. “Just now I ordered the Zhid to stop the attack. No one answered me.”

I caught my breath. “Then the avantir is—”

The door slammed inward, bouncing against the wall. Gerick dived into the curtained alcove behind the bed. I had a chair in my hand before the tall man in the black, hooded cloak could drop two bulging leather saddlebags to the floor and stretch his long arms out to either side.

“It's all right. Just me. Everything's all right.” He shook off his hood. Paulo.

He caught the chair before it crashed to the floor, and when I flung my arms about his waist and burst out crying like a ridiculous schoolgirl, he wrapped his long arms about me and allowed me to dampen his apparel even more than it was already. “I guess it's been a rough night for everyone.”

After a moment I felt the need to regain a bit of self-respect and reassure Paulo that I hadn't suddenly misinterpreted our friendship. Though my arms seemed unwilling to relax their hold, I swallowed sharply and forced my voice even. “Aimee's well?”

“She's off to the palace with Je'Reint and Ven'Dar. You just can't imagine what all she can do.” No worries that his attentions had been diverted from brave, insightful Aimee. The new note of assurance in his admiration, an air of privileged knowledge, almost had me smiling.

He waved at the empty bed. “Where's—?”

“Knew you'd get our backs—you and that excessively cheerful lady.”

The voice from the alcove spun Paulo out of my grasp and brought a grin to his face. “Knew you'd get into trouble without me. But, demons of the deep, I never thought . . .”

Paulo's smile faded as Gerick kept his distance. Gerick's expression had lost its luster as well. Though his words expressed genuine relief, his body was wary.

Paulo hesitated. “You're all right? You look a right bloody mess. I heard she stabbed you.”

“A small thing.” Gerick waved at his shoulder halfheartedly. “They've sent you to fetch me, haven't they?”

Paulo breathed deep. “I offered to speak with you. There's a number of folk downstairs waiting. Wicked upset. Needing to understand what's happened and why and what's going to happen next.”

“I've got to ride north first, Paulo. My father—”

“You can't go. There's some down below as want to bring this house down on your head no matter who's with you or what questions will never be answered. There's some as would have you trussed up in so much dolemar it would look like plate armor, and locked away in Feur Desolé with your mind like frog spit before you take two breaths more. You set foot in a direction they don't like and they'll do it, no matter what you might do to them in return. Ven'Dar has pledged his word that before the next hour passes you'll answer for what you've done without so much as bending a hair on another man's head.”

“Ven'Dar had no right to do that.” Gerick turned away from us to face the window. He ran his fingers through his matted hair. “If my father isn't dead already, then he's got only hours left. I've killed him, Paulo, and I've got to tell him why. I've got to tell him what I learned . . . what I felt . . . how I tried to make things right even though I've destroyed everything he fought for. I'll do whatever they want after, but he has to know before he goes.”

Paulo walked up behind him. Closer than anyone else in the world would dare go just now. “He knows, my lord . . . my
good
lord. If he felt you inside him—holding on to him, protecting him, giving him strength to survive that upheaval last night—the same way I felt it, the same way Aimee did—”

“Yes! That's exactly what I felt,” I blurted out.

Paulo dipped his head toward me as he continued. “—then he understands all he needs to know. He doesn't want you dead, and he'd hate for these good people to bear the burden of killing the one who saved them after all.”

Long moments passed. Gerick's shoulders were still.

“It's not fair,” he said at last. “My head must already be filled with frog spit. The only morsel of power I managed to scrape together here at the end of everything, and I used it to test the avantir. I could have used it to tell him goodbye.”

Paulo had brought wine, water, bread, bandages, towels, a clean white shirt for Gerick, and a clean green tunic for me. I didn't complain that the tunic bagged out of my vest and reached all the way to my knees as if it were an elder brother's. Rather I almost fell into overemotional foolishness again at the thought of washing my face. Perhaps if I could get clean, I could form a clear thought.

When Paulo asked if I could warm the washing water, I clenched my dead fingers as if I could hide their incapacity. I told him my mother had taught me that cold washing was healthier. He very kindly did not refute the lie by mentioning my adamant insistence on hot water for cleansing Gerick's wounds back in the desert.

After we had washed and changed, we sat in the middle of the patterned rug and shared out the provisions. Paulo left the food to Gerick and me, as he had eaten more recently, but he shared the wine and gave us a brief summary of his adventures while we ate.

Evidently Aimee had raised an image of witness so harrowingly clear and indisputable that Je'Reint and his commanders had been jolted into immediate action. Je'Reint's legion had ridden to the succor of Avonar through half a day and most of a night without stopping. From Paulo's account, I estimated that the Dar'Nethi had fallen on the Zhid from the rear only a few hours after Gerick had broached the Gate fire.

“We found more Zhid out there than flies in a dairy herd,” Paulo said, “but everyone marveled how so few Zhid were already inside the walls. Most of the Zhid were still in their camps, waiting for orders to move. Some said a Lord was commanding the Zhid. . . .”

Paulo waited for Gerick to say something. But Gerick was spreading a thick bean paste onto his portion of the chewy bread with Paulo's eating knife. He just shrugged and motioned Paulo to go on, then threw the knife down and ate as if he'd never tasted food before.

The battle had been joined immediately, Paulo said, and continued through the tumultuous night. “. . . then the whole world went dark, a lot like in the Bounded when you stopped the firestorms. But this time I could see maybe three paces from my nose, and nothing else. I was glad I didn't have a light, as I just knew that if I was to shine it past what I could see, nothing would be there. Just nothing. The ground shook so hard, I can't figure how anything in the city is still standing. But when the shaking stopped, and the world came back, the Zhid couldn't fight any more. Some threw down their weapons and flopped down on the ground. Some waved swords around, but as if they'd forgotten what to do with them. Some just took off running. While the Dar'Nethi started taking prisoners and chasing after the runners, Je'Reint and Aimee and me took out straight through the city to the palace. Aimee told us the Bridge was gone, and Je'Reint was afraid everyone was dead in there.”

We had scarcely swallowed the last morsels when Paulo stood up and reached for his cloak, well before the critical hour could expire. He offered me his hand, but spoke to Gerick. “The Preceptors want to question you and to take you to the Chamber of the Gate to have you explain what's there. But we have to go downstairs first. People are gathering.”

I refused his help. Thoughts of what might come made me instantly regret that I had eaten anything.

Gerick wiped his hands on one of the towels and got to his feet. As Paulo held the door open, Gerick touched my arm gently, staying my steps. He studied my face, starting to speak several times and then stopping himself. His expression had been tight and sober since he had yielded to Paulo. Now his mouth twitched and his eyes kept meeting mine and then glancing away again. The moment seemed very long. “Perhaps it would be best if you—”