Son of Avonar Read online

  I tried to digest the idea of a “fracturing,”—an earthquake, perhaps?—but quickly decided to go on to more urgent matters. “Tell us of these Zhid, Baglos.”

  Baglos wrinkled his face in disgust. “The Zhid. The Empty Ones. Servants of the three who are called the Lords of Zhev’Na. We are taught that the Zhid, and even the Lords themselves, were once Dar’Nethi or Dulcé like us, their souls lost when the Catastrophe laid waste all the lands beyond Avonar. But I believe they were a terrible mistake of Vasrin Shaper when she put form to the life Vasrin Creator had made. Zhid feed on fear and destruction and despair. And they are powerful warriors, though their Seeking is more to be feared than their swords.”

  “This ‘Seeking’ is something of sorcery, then?”

  “It is their most terrible sorcery. It withers a man, binding him to the Lords in service, sometimes taking his name and leaving him empty or mad, sometimes making him like to the Zhid in all of their evil. A forest can shelter you from them, as can some dwellings, because a forest is of all places the one where life is thick and rich. And if the dwelling is a home where there have been births and deaths and people living there who care for each other, the Zhid can destroy the house itself, but their Seeking cannot penetrate it.”

  I asked Baglos much more, but he seemed incapable of answering anything beyond what he had already told us. “On another day,” he kept saying. “Ask me again and I could tell you.” His knowledge was so spotty, his physical capabilities so unprepossessing, and his emotional state so volatile, that I doubted that he could keep D’Natheil alive, much less do anything in the way of guiding him. He obviously cared for his young lord and his people very deeply, but, aside from his remarkable fluency in my language, he demonstrated no power of intellect or intuition to support his duties, especially when one thought of the dangers D’Natheil faced from the law of Leire, as well as his own enemies.

  “What must you do now, Baglos?” I asked. “What were you and D’Natheil to accomplish in Leire, if all had gone as you planned?”

  Baglos looked at me like a child who has just heard from his parents that he must teach them to walk, instead of the other way around. “I do not know.”

  “Surely there was some goal, some deed to perform?”

  “I do not know.”

  “You are called a Guide. To what place were you to lead him or in what activity? You speak of his duty to ‘walk the Bridge.’ Is that it? What does it mean?”

  “I know my own duties, woman, but as for D’Natheil’s course and his purpose and what he must do to further them, I cannot say.”

  “Have you lost your memory, too?”

  “I have not!” Baglos was indignant and turned away from me in a pout.

  I exploded. “Then why in the name of all that lives were you sent? If you don’t know these things today, you’re not going to know them tomorrow. How wise can your Preceptors be to put someone who knows so little in this position? It’s madness!”

  Baglos turned back to me with an expression of long suffering. “No, no, woman. You do not understand the Dulcé. Did I not tell you our gifts were different from the Dar’Nethi? It is not required to know all these things. If the Heir were to command me, then I would know what was necessary, and I could teach him or lead him as he desired.”

  My head was splitting as I tried to understand. “It doesn’t make sense. How could you tell him anything you don’t know?”

  “Such is the gift of the Dulcé: to make connections when commanded by our madrisson—one with whom we have been linked by the rite of the madris. If D’Natheil commanded me to lead him to some great city, even if I had never seen it, I could discover the best way to take him there. If he commanded me to teach him the lore of the stars as practiced in your land, then I could do so, but I could not tell you of it now. If the information is to be found, then I can acquire it. But he it was who knew his course and his purpose. It was not necessary for me to be told.” The Dulcé leaned close and his strange eyes hammered at me. “You must help me, woman. We must find a way to make him remember and to finish his preparation, for if we do not, D’Arnath’s Bridge will fall and the Lords of Zhev’Na will feast on the souls of your people as well as ours. We will see no beauty and no joy ever again.”

  Though I believed he spoke truth, I wondered about the many things the Dulcé would not or could not tell us. His story was impossibly strange. And woven through it all were the magical names. J’Ettanne. Avonar. Just as they were woven through the life I had fought so hard to forget . . .

  CHAPTER 12

  Year 2 in the reign of King Evard

  In the season of Seille of the year that I turned twenty-three, Karon and I were wed. The true ceremony took place in the grand drawing room at Windham, Martin’s elegant silk tapestries, crystal, and brass softened by garlands of fragrant evergreen and the light of five hundred candles. Only our four closest friends were there to witness it. I wore dark green velvet and carried roses that Karon had grown for me. Martin placed my hand in Karon’s, and it was difficult to tell which of our company radiated the greatest happiness. Julia swore adamantly that it was Tennice. For my part, I believed that good Arot himself, in that first Long Night at the beginning of the world, could have been gifted with no better friends and no more perfect joy.

  I notified Tomas of my marriage. In return, I received a letter from his man of business. My marriage portion was to be the townhouse and a settlement sufficient to ensure the Lady Seriana’s position cannot be seen as a reproach to the family. The Duke of Comigor has no wish to enter into any negotiations with any parties, and since his consent to the marriage was not required, he will assume that the consent of the suitor is not required as to the settlement.

  Though I knew Evard would have claimed the sizeable dowry my father had set aside for me, I didn’t argue. Karon and I had more than enough. Tomas had not been stingy, and Karon had a gentleman’s income, set up anonymously by his father when Karon had first gone to the University.

  Our more public wedding was in Montevial, where my circle of acquaintances had come to know Karon as the new Leiran Commissioner of Antiquities. My former beau, Viscount Mantegna, had told me of the post, vacant for several months since its most recent occupant had died, and I had pestered Karon until he applied for it. My new husband had returned to Montevial with some vague notion of using his income to buy a house in some out-of-the-way place so we could be together, but to leave Montevial made no sense when I held title to my family’s townhouse, a much finer home than anything he could afford. Evard’s marriage and Tomas’s flourishing career had eased the fears that had forced both Karon and me into self-imposed exile, and even Martin agreed that a respectable position and Karon’s intention to forego any privilege of rank would preclude any closer inquiry as to Karon’s origins. Though we would always need to be careful, we believed we had weathered the storm. And truly, the court posting was perfect for him.

  The antiquities collection was a conglomeration of cultural rarities and worthless junk dumped haphazardly into the vaults of the royal treasury after every Leiran military victory. No one knew quite what to do with it all. Only the suspicion that abandoning the hoard would somehow subject Leire to the scorn of foreigners, who seemed to value such things, convinced the administrators to replace the deceased commissioner. Karon did not care about the political purposes of the treasure, but considered the position an unparalleled opportunity for anyone with an interest in history and culture. To care for such treasures as they needed to be cared for, to have unlimited access to study and write about them, to have the charter to seek out whatever might be available to augment the collection—he admitted that no position was more suited to the nature of a J’Ettanni scholar. So much to discover.

  We kept up a social life in keeping with my rank and Karon’s position, though with far fewer engagements than I had in my year alone. Marriage made me dull, I heard it said. Acquaintances whispered that I had married beneath me, but then it was a
fact that I was getting on in age for a first marriage. Indeed, most men would shy away from anyone with my uncomfortable relationship with King Evard, so perhaps I couldn’t afford to be too selective. I cared not a whit for what anyone said.

  I still had a thousand questions about sorcery and the J’Ettanne, but Karon was unused to speaking of his secrets, and I was reluctant to begin our life together by forcing him out of his habits. When he was ready, he would tell me everything I wanted to know. I had never felt so deliriously happy, so much at peace, as in those first weeks after our wedding.

  Karon reveled in his work, and I delved into my studies with renewed fervor, determined to share in the intellectual pursuits he valued. But as the winter deepened, I noticed a disturbing change in him. It began with a growing restlessness that no amount of walking, riding, or other occupation seemed to satisfy. He would sit with me of an evening to write letters or read, but instead of luring me into two hours’ conversation with some anecdote from his reading, he would throw down his book or his pen after only a short time and stand staring into the fire. No teasing or question, no puzzle or activity or entertainment of any kind could hold his attention, and though his affection seemed undiminished—far from it, in fact—he expressed less and less of it with words. Even after the act of love itself, he could not speak or sleep, but would excuse himself and go walking alone.

  I refused to pry. I had observed a similar behavior in his years at Windham; it had always passed without explanation, and I had promised myself to respect his privacy. But on the evening he broke off our planning for Tanager’s thirtieth-birthday celebration, circling the library like a trapped beast and muttering that he couldn’t concentrate, I decided I could no longer wait for explanations. . . .

  “Karon, what is it? You’ll wear holes in the floor with your pacing.”

  He looked up, his expression that of a deer facing a hunter’s bow. Every terrible fantasy a new wife could invent raced through my mind: he didn’t love me . . . he felt he had made a mistake . . . I had displeased him in some way.

  “Tell me,” I said. “Whatever it is.”

  “Oh gods, Seri. I thought I could be rid of this. With all you give me, I must be a fool.” He paced across our library and picked up a book, riffling through its pages. Without looking at a line of it, he tossed it down again. He crouched and threw a log onto the fire, and then cursed himself when it rolled out, scattering ash and sparks across the rug. He reached for a hearth brush to scoop up the mess, but I snatched it from his hand and pushed him to the floor, seating myself on the rug just in front of him.

  “I am your wife. Tell me.”

  He breathed deeply, his face sculpted with such distress, I had to force myself still. “Not two months ago I pledged I would never leave you, and here we’ve scarcely begun. . . . I swear to you, Seri, my feelings have not changed, nor has my intent, but I’m afraid my vow must bend.” He took my hands in his, as he unleashed the flood of words. “Do you remember, in those early years at Windham, how I would leave for a few weeks from time to time?”

  “Your research trips. Interviews and observations.”

  “Well, that wasn’t quite the truth. But of course you didn’t know about me. If I’d told you I had to go because my blood was on fire, you would have thought me mad.”

  “Most likely.”

  He tried to smile. I could not even attempt it. His hands were near scorching my own.

  “To describe it so would have been . . . would be . . . no exaggeration. This gift I have is forbidden by every law and custom in the world, yet would be far easier to ignore my eyes or my heart or to forgo speech or breathing than to abandon it. The journeys I made from Windham were to every manner of place. In such times as ours, it’s not difficult to find those who need what I have to offer. Though there aren’t ten people on this earth who would knowingly accept healing from a sorcerer, many are desperate enough to ask no questions.”

  He kneaded my fingers, then bundled them up and enfolded them in his own. “What I’m trying to say in this stupidly muddled way is that I cannot stop. I thought I could after I came back last autumn. After a year of wandering, of doing little else but healing, I was spent. I thought that perhaps I had done enough, and from then on, it could be only when I would choose. I swore I’d never do anything to endanger you, even if it meant I never used my talents again. But that’s impossible. Neither my body nor my mind will allow me to ignore what I am. If I’m not on this earth to heal, then I cannot understand the purpose of my life. And if I fail to heed this call, then I’m afraid you may wake one morning to find a lunatic in your bed. I have to go, Seri, until I can settle again.”

  “Will you come back?”

  He drew our clasped hands to his burning forehead and breathed the words. “I swear to you that I’ll come back as soon as I quiet this demon in me.”

  I had planned that my life would be different from the lives of other Leiran women. How often my mother had heard my father say, “My duty is to my king. I cannot take my ease in bed with you when there are battles to be fought and won.” She, as all warriors’ wives, had spent her life waiting for her husband to come home from war. But as a girl, I had nurtured dreams of fighting my own battles, of leading merchant caravans, or exploring the wild lands beyond our borders—a life of more purpose than waiting.

  And so, as Karon told me haltingly of the strange fever that grew in him the longer he denied himself use of his power, I began to envision possibilities: travel together, adventure, not bloody combat with swords and severed limbs and looted cities, but secret kindness and magical escapes. I could help him tend his patients, divert suspicions, watch his back while he was occupied with his magic. When he fell silent, looking a little puzzled, I burst out with my ideas. “Well, at least you needn’t go alone anymore. . . .”

  But Karon dismissed my fantasies as quickly as they’d grown. “The places I go are not for you: battlefields, border villages, the poorest quarters of any city, disease and danger in every corner. And the way I have to manage it, in secret, always hiding, in disguise, ready to run at any moment. It would be impossible for two. I’ve no love for putting myself in jeopardy, but I cannot—will not—endanger you. I’ll not take you.”

  I argued with him all the rest of that evening and into the next day, as he gathered a few things to take with him on his journey: some plain and sturdy clothes, a worn brown cloak with deep pockets on the inside, a supply of food, and a flask of wine. But despite my best reasoning, my escalating accusations of his mistrust and his disdain of my abilities, and a serious threat to bar him from my bed when he returned, he would not even tell me where he was going.

  “I tell you again,” he said, “you are the most capable, most intelligent, most determined person I know—man or woman. I trust you with my life every hour. But this is for your safety. If I were to—If anything were to happen—which I promise it will not—you must have no idea where I’ve gone. You can say that I was a typical blockheaded man and refused to allow a woman to know of my business. Be ignorant and blame me for it. Promise me. . . .” Even with all his peaceful ways, Karon could be stubborn.

  Only as he led his horse from our stable and kissed me did I relent. “Then I suppose this is the way it must be,” I said. But only for now, I thought. I was stubborn, too.

  He did come back, after only five days away. Four weeks later, he had to leave again. Sometimes he was gone for a week, rarely more than two. He would return home tired, sometimes grieving, but always at peace. And after a few weeks, the restlessness would begin to grow in him again. I came to recognize its onset before Karon did.

  At first, he did not speak of his journeys even after he came home. I quite pointedly refused to ask about them, acting as though he’d not even been away. But after one four-week absence that had left me so frantic with worry that I could not pretend indifference, he broke his silence. Late on the night of his return, after a singularly desperate lovemaking, he held me in the dark o
f our bedchamber and began to tell me of a poor, isolated village near the Kerotean border that was devastated by a wasting sickness that had left three quarters of its people and all of its children dead. I let him talk until he fell asleep. He never spoke of it again.

  But as time went on he did open this most private part of his life to me. He told of towns rife with fever, of Kerotean settlements ravaged by bandits, of streets where children grew malformed because their food had been taken for soldiers or because their childhoods had been sold for labor in mines or quarries. He would work until someone asked questions or until he had done all he could do.

  So many of us lived our lives without accomplishing anything of worth. I could only marvel at the stupidities of a world that would call such a gift, so freely given, evil.

  Deep on one night in early spring, when Karon was away on one of his journeys, I was awakened by the soft pad of footsteps crossing the wood floor of our bedchamber. Beyond the bed-curtains a faint light moved from the direction of the doorway to the far wall where a washing cabinet stood between the windows. I huddled silently under the bedclothes, cursing my foolish presumption that just because I shared a bed with a sorcerer I could forego the Comigor custom of hanging knife and sword above the bed. A medley of strange sounds came from the room: a bundle laid down, a quickly silenced ring of metal, the clink of glass. Time passed. My terror turned to puzzlement. No one had murdered me. Thieves would have taken what valuables I owned and fled. Pouring liquid . . . ripping cloth . . . a man’s muffled curse . . . Karon . . .