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  I told him of Mad Lucy and how she had been found, and that Gerick had not yet been told. “He shouldn’t have to hear such news from me,” I said. “I’m too much a coward to face his wrath. I’m worried—”

  “. . . that he’ll blame you.”

  “With Lady Verally’s constant harping on revenge, it seems certain.” And how could I face the child, withholding the fact that I knew his Lucy and had ample reason to despise her?

  “Perhaps it would be well if I saw the dead woman first, then spoke to the boy. I’ll remind him of the dangers of age and senility, and also that his mother bore two dead children long before you were in residence.”

  “I’d be most grateful. It grieves me to be unable to comfort him. He is such a sad child.”

  “You’ve become quite attached to him.”

  “I suppose I have.” Somehow, what had begun as a challenge had become a work of affection I hadn’t thought possible. Yet, even after so many months, I scarcely knew the boy.

  Ren Wesley shook his massive head. “I wish we’d been able to speak with this nurse before she chose to withdraw from life. Perhaps she could have explained the boy to us in some fashion.”

  The physician took his leave, following Nancy to Maddy’s room. Meanwhile I sent a message to Gerick, requesting him to meet Ren Wesley in the small reception room in half an hour.

  A short time later Gerick’s young manservant sought me out with a worried look on his face. “The duke is not in his rooms, my lady,” he said. Then, with concern overshadowing discretion, he added, “And what’s more, his bed has not been slept in this past night. I asked the guards as were on duty through the night, and none’s seen the young master since yestereve.”

  Thinking of my own troubled sleep, and the evidence I had found of Gerick’s disturbance of mind, I wasn’t surprised. “Yesterday was a very trying day for him, James. My guess is that you’ll find him curled up on a couch or chair somewhere. Take two others and search him out. We must speak with him.”

  No sooner had James left than Nancy skittered into the gallery, saying that Ren Wesley respectfully requested my presence in Lucy’s room. I hurried along the way, leaving Nancy to intercept James should he return with word of Gerick.

  Ren Wesley stood contemplating the still figure that lay on the pallet in the cluttered room. His arms were folded across his wide chest and he was twisting the end of his exuberant mustache with two thick fingers. When I came in, he whirled about, scowling.

  “What is it, sir?” I asked.

  “My lady, there is something you must know about this woman’s death. There is foul play here.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You must pardon the vulgar description, madam. There is no pleasant way to phrase it. Look at the depth of these gashes; they pass not only through skin and sinew, but right into the bone.”

  He expected me to understand, but I shook my head.

  “What it means is, she could not have done it to herself.”

  “But she was a strong woman.”

  “Look here.” He picked up Maddy’s hands and showed me her swollen joints and crooked fingers. I had seen such in several old servants, the painful inflammation that robbed strong and diligent men and woman of their livelihood. One who had shod wild horses could no longer grip the reins of a child’s pony. One who had carried the heaviest loads or sewn the finest seams could no longer lift a mug of beer or grasp a sewing needle. “She may have had the strength to do such injury, but never could she have applied it with these hands.”

  “Then you’re saying—”

  “This woman was murdered.”

  I was speechless . . . and appalled . . . and my skin flushed with unreasonable pangs of guilt. If anyone learned of my connection with Lucy—Maddy—the finger of accusation would point directly at me.

  “Who would do such a thing? And for what possible cause?” Ren Wesley demanded in indignation.

  “She was mute,” I stammered, shamed that my first thought had been of myself and not this poor woman. “And, from what I was told, a gentle soul. It doesn’t make sense.”

  People were murdered because of passion: hatred, jealousy, fear. Lucy had neither physical beauty nor the kind of attractions or influence that could generate such emotions. People were also murdered for business: politics, intrigue, secrets. She had been involved in such things, but what could she know that could provoke murder? And why now? For ten years she had been out of sight; for five of those she had rocked in her chair and puttered about with children’s toys.

  Ren Wesley was looking at me intently. Waiting. “What am I to tell the boy?” His words were precise, his voice cold.

  “It would be hard enough to tell him that she did it herself, but this . . .” The temptation to hide the truth strained my conscience. What if the woman had somehow let Gerick know of her connection with me?

  “He has to be told,” I said at last. “However painful it is, hiding the truth will only compound the hurt.” Someday he would know, even if he figured it out for himself. “And when the duchess is well enough, we’ll have to inform her also.”

  The physician nodded. I thought I saw a flash of relief cross his face. “I was hoping you would say that.” My reputation was wicked. If even so liberal-minded a soul as Ren Wesley had felt it reason to doubt me, I couldn’t blame him.

  By late afternoon, Gerick had not been found. With my permission, James had started inquiries among the other servants, but no one had seen the boy since he had taken his cloak from his room the previous evening. I directed the servants to start at one end of the castle and search every nook and cranny, inside and out, high and low, no matter how improbable.

  Meanwhile, the day dragged on, and we had to take care of Lucy. I dispatched a gardener to prepare a resting place in the frozen hillside beyond the family burial ground at Desfiere. As Nellia, Nancy, and I rolled the dead woman in her blankets so the men could carry her out, Nancy picked up something from the corner and laid it on top of the grim bundle. “She must’ve kept it since summer,” whispered the girl. “Nice for her to have a flower, even if it’s old.”

  I looked at what the girl had found and touched it, not quite believing the evidence of my senses. It was wrong, jarringly wrong, like so much I had seen and heard in the past two days. But like a catalyst in a alchemist’s glass, the wilted blossom drew the pieces of the puzzle together: Philomena, whose womb could carry no children to full term . . . a firepit with no trace of ash or soot, yet bearing a lump of molten lead . . . a child who would allow no one to know him, not a tutor, not a kind physician, not even the father he loved . . . a child who lived in terror of sorcery . . . a woman who was living where she had no reason to be . . . And now, a lily . . . in the middle of winter, a lily, wilted, but not dead, its soft petals still clinging to the stem . . . a lily that had been fresh not twelve hours earlier. I knew only one person who loved Maddy enough to give her a flower, as he had given her straw animals and a reed flute and a hundred other childish creations. But where in the middle of winter would any child find a lily to give the woman who had tended him . . . from the day of his birth . . . ?

  “Nellia,” I said in a whisper, scarcely able to bring words to my tongue. “What is Gerick’s birthday?

  The old housekeeper looked at me as if I were afflicted with Mad Lucy’s malady. “Pardon, my lady?”

  “The young duke . . . on what day and in what year was he born?”

  I knew what she was going to say as clearly as I knew my own name.

  “Why, it’s the twenty-ninth day of the Month of Winds, ten years ago, going on eleven in the coming spring.”

  It was as if the world I knew dissolved away, leaving some new creation in its place, a creation of beauty and wonder that crumbled into horror and disaster even as I marveled at its birth. How could I find my place in such a world? What could I call truth any longer, when that which had been the darkest, most bitter truth of my life was now made a lie? To non
e of those questions could I give an answer, but I did know who had murdered Lucy and why, and it was, indeed, because of me.

  Darzid had never expected to find me here, had not believed I could ever find out. When he discovered his miscalculation and my laughable ignorance of the truth sitting in my hand, he took swift action to remedy his mistake. Lucy had never been feebleminded, but brave and clever and devoted, feigning a ruined mind in order to keep the child she loved safe. She had taught him to hide what he could do. When she was told that she was no longer needed in the nursery, she knew better, and she did what was necessary to make sure she was close by to watch him, to be his friend when he dared not let anyone close enough to discover his terrible secret.

  Ten years ago on the twenty-ninth day of the Month of Winds . . . two months to the day after Karon’s burning . . . the day the silent, gentle Maddy had helped me give birth to my son.

  From my breast burst a cry of lamentation that would have unmanned the Guardians of the Keep, making them snap the chains that bound them to their sacred duty. I ran like a madwoman through the corridors of Comigor, knowing as well as I knew the sun would set that Gerick would not be found in any corner of the world I knew.

  CHAPTER 9

  Karon

  The forest was dense, shady, and incredibly green. The bearded mosses hung down and tickled my face as I fought my way through the thick underbrush. No trail lay before me, only a distant speck of light piercing the emerald gloom. My destination . . . if I could but shove the masses of greenery out of my way, I had no doubt that I could reach the light. Well rested, bursting with strength, I swept aside the verdant obstacles. But as I traversed the forest, the light got no closer and the green faded to gray. . . .

  The cool brush of pine boughs hardened into cold, rough stone, the wispy mosses into a white linen sheet and gray wool blankets. Only the light was constant, unwavering. Through the thick glass of my window the sun glared from the eastern sky, demanding that my eyes come open to greet the morning.

  Such a strange sensation. How long had it been since my eyes had opened of their own volition, no hand on my shoulder rattling my teeth, no sarcastic taunting? “Must I get my scraping knife? Your limbs have attached themselves to this couch like barnacles to a coastal schooner.” Or, “What dream is this that holds you? You lie here like an empty-headed cat in a sunbeam, dreaming only of your full stomach while two worlds hold their breath, awaiting your pleasure.”

  I stretched and sat up. My dream had not lied. I felt rested as I had not in waking memory, and I was ravenously hungry. Had Dassine succumbed to pity at my lamentable state? We had been through five or six sessions in the circle of candles since my collapse in Lady Seriana’s garden on the far side of the Bridge, and from each I had emerged a ragged refugee, taking longer each time to orient myself in the present.

  When I was a child in Avonar, the lost Avonar of the mundane world, my brothers and I had a favorite place. A small river tumbled down from the snowfields of Mount Karylis in the summer, clear and icy. At certain places on the forested slopes, the water would be captured by great boulders forming deep clear pools, perfect for swimming. High above one of these pools was a chute of smooth rocks, worn away by a spring that raced down the rocks to join the river. We would slide naked down the chute and fly through the air before plunging into the pool far below. The experience teetered on the glorious edge of terror.

  In these latest sessions of reliving my lost memories, I had felt as if I were on that long downward slide again, racing along a path that would soon leave me hanging helplessly in the air, ready to plunge into icy darkness. Whatever awaited me beyond the smooth surface—the enchantments that hid my own life from me—was terrifying, yet I could no more stop myself than I could have checked my careening path down that rocky chute.

  Dassine had shown no inclination to let my difficulties slow my progress, and so, on the morning that my eyes opened of themselves, I was immensely curious as to what had caused this change of heart. Our last session had ended in late morning, and I had not dallied before falling into bed. Unless the sun’s course of life had taken as strange a turn as had my own, I had slept the clock around.

  I shivered in the unusually cold air and put on my robe, expecting Dassine to burst in on me at any moment, raising his exuberant eyebrows in disdain. The water in my pitcher was frozen solid. Another oddity. My washing water had never been anything but tepid, even on the coldest mornings. Having no implement to crack the ice, I touched it with a bit of magic, only enough to melt the crust, not to make the water warm. Liquidity was sufficient.

  Even the use of power was not enough to bring Dassine. The first time I had attempted any magical working in his house—putting out a small fire from a toppled lamp—he had pounced like a fox on a dallying rabbit, berating me for wasting my strength on “frivolities.”

  As I stepped through the doorway into Dassine’s lectorium, the air began to vibrate with a high-pitched keening. The old villain had put a ward on my door. Dassine and I would have to talk again about honesty and trust. Annoyed far beyond the irritation of the noise, I searched for some way to quiet the screech, but to my amazement I couldn’t even find the door opening. Filling the space where the doorway should have been was a span of dingy plaster and shelves laden with books and herb canisters and uncounted years’ accumulation of dust and miscellany—all quite substantial. Instinct told me I should experience a “hair-on-end” sensation when encountering such an illusion, but the enchantment was so subtle, I couldn’t sense it at all.

  The noise soon died away with nothing to show for it. My wonderment at his skill and annoyance at his cheek were snuffed out by the weight of the silence. “Dassine,” I called quietly. No answer.

  Along with his restrictions on use of power, dress, speech, and questioning, Dassine had forbidden me to leave his lectorium unaccompanied. He enjoined me repeatedly not to trespass his limits, saying that if I trusted him in all else, I had to trust that they were necessary. Truly, I hated to cross him, and so I decided to wait before searching further, despite the strangeness of the morning.

  The remnants of our last meal sat on the worktable: a basket of bread, now cold and dry, a plate with a few scraps of hardened cheese, not two, but three dirty soup bowls, and two mugs smelling of brandy—“Bareil’s best” Dassine had always called the contents of his green bottle. The candlesticks were still put away, the newest crate of tall beeswax candles unopened on the floor beside them. The chamber seemed no more and no less cluttered than usual. I sat at the table for a while, pushing around a few of the red and green sonquey tiles scattered on the table. Half of the tiles were arranged in a pattern bounded by finger-length silver bars, as if a game had been interrupted.

  A small wooden cabinet lay toppled on the floor, its painted doors fallen open and several oddments spilled out: a gold ring, a small enameled box holding a set of lignial cards, used for tracing the lines of magical talent through a family, and one other item that fit in no easy classification—a plain circle of dull wood about the size of my palm. Embedded in the wood was a small iron ring, and within the ring was set a highly polished, pyramid-shaped crystal of pure black, its height half the span of my hand. I righted the cabinet and picked up the things, setting them back on the shelves. While mulling what to do next, I idly rubbed a finger on one smooth facet of the shining crystal . . .and my body vanished, along with the world and everything in it. . . .

  I hung in void of pure black midnight, shot with threads of fine silver, as if someone had taken the stars and smeared them across their dark canvas on the day of their creation. So quiet . . . so still . . . though beyond the silence rang a faint chime of silver, as if the threads of light were speaking . . . singing. In the farthest reaches of my vision shimmered a line of light, shifting slowly from serene rose to glittering emerald to deep, rich blue.

  “I need to be there, I belong beyond that light. Oh gods, what is this hunger?” My nonexistent eyes burned with tears
. My incorporeal hands reached through the darkness toward the light.

  How do you measure desire? Those things left behind? To leave this physical being was not an obstacle; I’d grown to no comfort with it. To abandon my work, the memories of two lives so dearly bought in these past months, gave me no pause. The friends and family who populated my past were but ghosts who would be exorcised with the passage of that distant marker—the light that now shot violet, mauve, and purple trailers to either side, up, down, right, left in this directionless universe of darkness . . . so far away, teasing, tantalizing, luring me from all other concern. My kingdom? “I’m a cripple, half a madman, no matter what Dassine says. Better they find someone whole to lead them.” Like long, thin fingers, the silent bursts of color beckoned.

  How do you measure desire? Those things to be endured? The void itself was colder than the winter morning on which I had waked unbidden, but the perimeters of my being burned—not the cold fire of the smeared stars, not the colored fire of the distant aurora, but a conflagration that seared through the barriers of memory . . . from the boundaries of reason. Roaring, agonizing fire . . . hot iron about my wrists and ankles eating its way through flesh and bone . . . I was enveloped in darkness, abandoned in unbounded pain and horror. The tongue I had so carelessly wished away cried out, yet I would endure even this if I could but pass beyond the barrier of light. . . .

  Karon, my son, do not . . . not yet. Come back. From outside the holocaust called a voice so faint . . . almost unheard against the roar of the fire and my own cries.

  Dassine. My mentor, my Healer, my jailer. I had to tell him where I was going. If he understood about this hunger, about the beckoning fingers of amber and blue, he wouldn’t hold me. I didn’t belong with Dassine. But he didn’t answer my call, and I could not ignore his summoning. I dropped the crystal, and the world rushed back. . . .