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  My son closed his eyes for a time, and then, with an unsteady breath, he moved to the bed and laid his hand on his father's shoulder. After a moment, his expression as sere as a winter heath, he looked up at Ven'Dar. "My father asks that you summon T'Laven to undo what he has done. Tomorrow we will seek the aid of the Lady D'Sanya and take my father to her hospice if she permits it. Together we'll see what we can learn of her."

  Je'Reint strode to the middle of the chamber, his hands spread and raised as if to contain emotions threatening to escape his control. "My lord prince, my lord Karon, the Lady D'Sanya has been forthcoming and modest in all ways. To deceive our princess . . . even if we disagree with her philosophy … to set a spy on a young woman …" He did not need to voice his feelings about the choice of Gerick as the principal in the deception. The set of his dark brow, the direction of his glare said it all. "Surely we can find some other way to discern Zhev'Na's influence on her ideas, to persuade her to study the wisdom passed down through so many generations."

  Ven'Dar shook his head, troubled. "I am not easy with deception, Je'Reint. And to take advantage of my friend's pain and to keep Gerick from work that shapes a new world are actions my conscience will not view lightly. But somehow in the months since the Lady's arrival, Gondai itself has felt different to me, as if the very rock and soil beneath us are no longer stable. I've dismissed it as an old man's foolishness, but after my experience on the Bridge yesterday and this morning, I cannot shake the sense that we are racing headlong toward the verge of some great precipice."

  "My lord, no one else describes this uncertainty you feel. Rather the opposite. All who work with the Lady feel their own talent enhanced and their power magnified, as if the world is returning to the way it was before the Catastrophe. Yesterday, while working with her to unlock a Zhid spell trap on Ger'Shon's horses, I discovered that I was able to detect the breeding marks buried deep in the bone and tissues of his mares. For centuries every Horsemaster has worked toward such a skill, as it gives us our first hope of breeding out the weak hearts that have plagued our stock. What can that be but the Lady's influence? And how could such service of life be corruption?"

  Je'Reint, every line and sinew of his body echoing his words, could have persuaded a cat to rescue a drowning dog. But I was astonished to hear him challenge Ven'Dar so directly, especially with this hint of self-righteousness so uncharacteristic of him—and so ill-suited to a Perceiver.

  Even Ven'Dar stepped backward . . . but only one step and no farther. "If the danger I feel is not the woman herself, then we may need her exceptional power to withstand whatever is happening. In any case, we must be sure of her in every way possible before we give her the Bridge. I say this plan goes forward."

  In any matter pertaining to the Bridge, the authority of the Heir of D'Arnath was absolute. But I had never heard it asserted so forcefully. Je'Reint inhaled deeply, reining in the further arguments so clearly on his lips. He extended his palms and bowed. "My lord. I respectfully request that you release me from any active participation in this plan. My conscience—"

  "Unless the safety of the realm demands it." No doubts softened Ven'Dar's assent. "And you will discuss this with no one outside this room. If my requirement of silence gives you difficulty, I will devise a memory block."

  "My lord, your command binds me as always. Again, it is not your purpose, but only the means that gives me pause. If you will excuse me . . ." He bowed again, and Ven'Dar's gesture gave him permission to go. After a bow to me and a minimal nod in the direction of Gerick and Paulo, he took attentive leave of Aimee. She escorted him out of the room. I squirmed a little, feeling as if I had just barged in on a household of strangers and been presented with their unwashed linen.

  Seri . . .

  As Ven'Dar spoke with Gerick and Paulo about a story to use—something about old friends of Gar'Dena, come to the city to find better care than that in their town—Karon spoke to me privately, trusting that I understood the reasons why he had to help Ven'Dar, and why I could not go with him on what was likely to be his last journey. He did not reveal what he had said to Gerick to persuade him to the task. A portion of their relationship remained so intimate that I could not be a part of it. I had never grudged that. But in my own secret heart I raged once more at villainous fate, wishing fervently that my prayers had never been answered, that Gerick had stayed with his Singlars in the Bounded, and that Karon could have died as we sat in Martin's awakening garden, believing all his wars had been won.

  Chapter 4

  Gerick

  It was a letter from Roxanne that first got me thinking about taking a wife. Not her, of course. Though I'd known her since childhood and we'd shared an adventure or two, the Queen of Leire was not available. She had taken herself a consort less than two years after succeeding to her father's throne, an Isker prince who brought legitimacy to her sovereignty over his conquered land. He also brought no complications of romance or affection to muddle her first difficult years consolidating her authority, so she said. He was only thirteen years old. Her own mother's marriage had been such a political move, and Roxanne conceded to me—and most likely to no one else—that she held out a hope that by the time he was old enough, and she was ready to consider bearing a child, the union might turn out as successfully as her parents' had. But if not, she would find her pleasures where she could. Roxanne was a person of considerable determination.

  But it wasn't so much that her letter painted such an attractive picture of matrimony that my current lack of interest in the subject was reversed, but rather that it pointed out that I was doing a terrible injustice to one of the last people I could ever wish to hurt. She wrote that she was looking for a new Master of the Royal Horse, and that it was too bad Paulo wasn't available to take the position, as it would be a perfect situation for him: two thousand of the finest horses in any world to do with as he pleased. Let me know if ever you decide to set him free of you , she wrote, but if I had a captive friend who would do anything in the world for me, from loaning me his body, to saving my life, to polishing my boots, I wouldn't let him go either .

  I didn't like what she'd said. Paulo stayed in the Bounded by his own choice. I'd never asked him . . . never told him he couldn't leave if he wanted. We were friends. He knew how important he was to me.

  But Roxanne made me think back to the first time I had joined with Paulo, when I had possessed his body to keep him from being killed by the corrupt Guardian of the Bounded. Amid all his other thoughts and confusions, I had experienced his feelings for a Dar'Nethi girl he admired, and I'd realized that someday he'd have to do something about those feelings. Now five more years had passed, Paulo was almost twenty-four, and I'd not given it the slightest consideration. We'd had so much to do.

  While I made laws for the Bounded, heard disputes, set up the Watch, and trained it to protect the people from the wild creatures at the Edge, Paulo taught the Singlars how to make a harness and use it to control a mule, and how to use the mule to help them haul stone and water and to break ground to grow something other than tappa roots. While I worked to convince them of the value of reading and writing and sharing their knowledge with each other, Paulo taught them how to barter for the things one person could do better than another. And it was well known throughout the Bounded that if the king was too busy to hear your petition, or if he'd made up his mind too quickly, then the surest way to see justice done or needs addressed was to find the king's friend where he worked in the fields or the town. If there was merit in your words, the king's friend would recognize it, and the king would hear of it. I didn't see how I could possibly manage without him, but it had been too long since I'd asked him if that life was what he wanted.

  It would do no good to ask him outright. He'd say,

  "Nothing better to be at," and stay with me forever. And I couldn't just send him away as if I were angry with him or tired of his company. He knew me so well, he'd never believe it. And that was what got me thinking about taking a wif
e. Paulo and I ate together, worked together, rode together, and when we had any occasion to talk at all, we needed only half the words anyone else might. But if I were to marry, all of that would have to change. It would give him a reason to look at his own situation, and not to have to worry so much about me.

  So that became my plan. The only problem was, I had no idea as to how to go about it. I didn't know many women. The Singlars were only just getting used to pairing up with others who cared for them in that way, and I'd never met a one of them who wasn't so in awe of me that she could look me straight in the eye. And beyond that . . . well, the Queen of Leire was taken, even if we'd been willing to try cramming her ambitions and my strange history into one marriage. I didn't know anyone else.

  All this was on my mind when I sent Paulo through the portal to the Four Realms to find someone to teach us how to channel storm waters, and he came back the same day with the letter from my mother telling me that my father was mortally ill. And, of course, before you could brush a gnat from your face, we were in Avonar, Paulo stammering his heart out in front of the Dar'Nethi girl he'd worshipped since he was thirteen, and I faced with watching my father die.

  I had never planned to go back to Gondai. I had no sympathetic feelings for the Dar'Nethi or their world; the place would just bring back bad memories.

  Only my father came close to understanding the things I had been taught in my years with the Lords, the deeds I had done, what I had become when I joined with them, He had kept his promise never to reveal to anyone the horror of what I had been, even to my mother, from whom he kept no other secret. So he knew what it was he asked when he said I needed to use what I knew of Zhev'Na to test this Dar'Nethi woman. But he was willing to postpone his own dying, a release he craved as much as I craved forgetting the past, to make sure that the work we had done together was finished. I could not refuse him. We made a private bargain that day. If either one of us found that his part could not be borne another day, my father would let me go back to the Bounded so I could forget, and I would see him released from his suspended life and let him die.

  And so, on our first night in Avonar, I worked with my mother and the Dar'Nethi Healer T'Laven to help my father endure one more night of illness. In order to persuade this Lady D'Sanya that he was willing to relinquish his freedom and his talent in exchange for relief of pain and postponement of death, my father believed it necessary to create in himself true desperation. I'll not be able to hide that I don't relish her gift , he said. But this way, if she reads me, she'll see clearly that I have reason enough to accept it. In truth, feeling anything is preferable to the way I am now —neither dead nor alive .

  When the sky turned gray, my father was dozing. T'Laven had left with the first birdsong to summon the Lady D'Sanya, while Aimee brought us cups of something hot that smelled of fruit and spices. My mother took a cup, sighed, and held it in her lap. Since my father had made his decision, she had said very little. Though she agreed that our plan was the only one that made sense, she was afraid of the cost.

  I was sitting on the floor cushions, leaning against the bed. Aimee leaned over so I could reach the steaming cup perched on her tray. "Saffria," she said quietly, when I looked up with that very question on my tongue. Her smile was much too cheerful for so early a morning, like a stray sunbeam that strikes your eyelids before you're ready to wake up. "Spiced fruit cider. I seem to have made it especially pungent this morning. I've not been sleeping well of late, and it leaves me more careless than usual."

  I took the cup, not so much because I wanted it, but because her tray was tilted at an alarming angle and I didn't want the scalding stuff in my lap. I was feeling groggy, numb, and half nauseated, as one does after so little sleep. "Thank you," I mumbled, holding the cup with no intention of putting it near my mouth.

  "You might try it," she said. "My father always said saffria cleared his head when he had difficult thinking to do." Then she crouched down beside me, whispering, "You must persuade your mother to drink some, too. She didn't eat anything last night. And your friend . . . he sat outside that door all night, just fallen asleep in the past hour. My lord, will he be offended that I've laid a blanket over him? The morning air is so chill coming in through the courtyard, even in summer."

  "No. Not offended at all." More likely he would go speechless for a fortnight at the thought of her touching him. Why was life so complicated?

  Aimee hovered over me for a moment before tiptoeing out of the bedchamber. I didn't really believe she would know one way or the other, but I took a drink of the saffria to please her . . . and almost coughed it up again. Far too sweet for my taste, but indeed pungent. It raced straight upward, eating away all the cobwebs, dust, and other detritus that clogged my head. "Thank you," I croaked, even though she was no longer there to hear me.

  I downed the rest of the saffria. Fully awake now, I was ready to do almost anything to get the matter of the mysterious D'Sanya over quickly. The sight of my mother resting her head on my father's pillow made me hate Healers who had no remedies for disease, hate the Dar'Nethi who complicated everything with their self-righteous bickering over their Bridge and their throne, and hate myself for being unable to help my father in any meaningful way and for grudging him this single task that he had set me. Last night had been wretched for several reasons.

  Sounds of doors and voices pulled me to my feet. My mother kissed my father's brow, waking him gently with whispered words I tried not to overhear. We all recognized the fact that he was unlikely to survive this venture. Soon, much too soon for my mother, Aimee poked her head through the door to the side-chamber. "My lady, this way, quickly."

  My mother was to watch our meeting through a myscal, a Dar'Nethi mirror device that could show her what was happening without her being seen. We had deemed it too risky to expose her as my father's wife when one touch on her shoulder and a simple probe of sorcery would reveal that she was not Dar'Nethi. Everyone in Avonar knew of Prince D'Natheil's remarkable wife from the other world. Our venture would be ended quickly if the Lady guessed our identity. A corrupt princess was not going to reveal the truth to the man who had destroyed the Lords, and an innocent princess was not going to reveal truth to a man who had been one of them.

  With a last touch of my father's hand and a kiss on my forehead, my mother hurried out of the room. The door shut softly behind her. Then the Lady D'Sanya, purportedly the daughter of a king a thousand years dead, walked into Aimee's house and eclipsed every thought, every plan, and every caution in my head.

  She was every bit of my own height, slender and graceful as a dancer. The planes of her cheek and her jaw were fine and delicate, shaping the light as if its source lay within her. Her dark blue gown, close fitting and banded high at the neck, revealed nothing and everything of round breasts and long, slender throat. Her hands clasped a heavy silver pendant that hung between her breasts, yet my eyes did not linger even in so enticing a place, for a pale corona of hair illuminated the most remarkable eyes the worlds had ever produced. They were the sapphire blue of a northern Vallorean lake where the icy water was deeper than the bowl of the sky, yet so clear one could see the gentle movements of the mosses among the smooth rocks at the bottom. She did not smile as she entered my father's room on T'Laven's arm, but swept us all into the sympathetic embrace of those shining eyes . . . and left me breathless and gaping like a fool.

  "With blessings of life, I greet you all," she said, in a voice as clear as a snowmelt brook in the highlands. "Gentle lady, good sir, and you, sir . . ." She opened her palms and nodded her head to Aimee, to my father, and then to me.

  Despite my every instinct and intention, I could not break the lock her eyes set upon my own. It might have been an hour I stared, discovering nothing I had expected to find in a mysterious Dar'Nethi woman come from Zhev'Na. I had steeled myself to see the Lords' mark on her, the touch of lurid amethyst, emerald, or ruby lurking behind a golden mask, the hint of dark steel behind her soft words, the faint sten
ch of corruption tainting her presence. But all I saw was kindness and wisdom so painfully won I believed I already knew the stories she could tell if ever she could bring herself to speak them. She broke our gaze first, shifting her attentions back to my father, who lay huddled on his bed, fully awake now and quivering with the effort of not screaming with each breath.

  The Lady knelt gracefully on the floor beside him, and, after a brief hesitation—perhaps asking his permission without words—laid one hand on her breast and one on his forehead. If enchantment could ever be visible to the eye, then I saw her lay her magic around him like blessed armor against the assault of his ravening disease. His tremors eased, and in a shaking whisper, he said, "With blessings of life, Lady . . ."

  She pressed a finger to her ups. "The good T'Laven tells me of your state, Master . . . K'Nor?" My father nodded at the false name we had chosen. "And of your belief that your fife's work is incomplete. He has told you of my offer and the conditions of it? I cannot cure this illness. If you leave the hospice, it will come full upon you again with all its mortal consequence. And while you stay with me, you will have no power of sorcery."

  "I'll confess . . . that's difficult. But I cannot … go

  on "

  "You have discussed this with your family? Their support is very important."

  "My son has accepted my judgment. There is no one else."

  "I wish I could offer more. But time and peace are yours if you wish them. Life awaits you."

  "Can it be soon? Please, Lady . . ." As he had planned, his desperation was no sham.

  "Give me your hand, sir. Your son may come to you five days hence, once you are settled." Though speaking to my father, she nodded at me. "Thereafter he may come whenever he wishes for as long as you stay in my house."