Fifty or more people crowded the garden, the eerie light of the flames shifting on pale cheeks and flashing in worried eyes. Behind me the flames roared, but the people had fallen silent, save for hissing breath and moaning misery … or perhaps that was the wind wrought up by the fire or perhaps it was entirely in my imagination. Somewhere in the crowd a woman sobbed. They did not move to let us pass.
"Where is the Lady?" demanded an elderly woman with tightly curled hair and a voice like a trumpet. She stood in the front ranks, supported by a pudgy youth of twelve or fourteen years, whose handlight was tinted orange by the flames behind me. "Who are you?"
"The Lady is gone and won't be back," I said. "The hospice is closed. Now, let us through."
Murmurs and exclamations and questions surged quickly into shouts and cries of dismay.
"I know who this is." A bull-necked man shouted above the horrified clamor. "He's the Fourth . . . D'Natheil's demon son . . . just look at him! Haven't you heard his description? He's killed us!"
"The Lord . . ."
"It's true. I've seen him here with the Lady!"
Some wailed in terror. A few fled. Others joined in the man's accusations, feeding their growing anxieties with information and rumor—some true, some ludicrous. The clamor grew, torches and handlights waving. Jen moaned softly and squirmed in my arms as if fighting to wake. I hefted her over my shoulder and gripped her waist with one arm. First one then another of the crowd moved toward us. A stone ripped through the air from the back of the crowd and glanced off my cheekbone. Hostile enchantment softened my knees like strong spirits on an empty stomach.
"Keep away!" I shouted, holding out my free hand as if five fingers could stay them. "You don't understand what you're dealing with." And this wasn't a good time for lengthy explanations.
The advance halted. Though most retreated a step or two, the boldest ones—a youngish man with a twisted shoulder, the woman who first questioned me and her young companion, the bull-necked man—stood their ground. I tried to summon some kind of power. Though the effort was like drinking dust, I eventually conjured a wavering gray gleam about Jen and me. It would do no more than cause a burst of sparks if anyone touched it. "Move aside if you value your eyes."
"Where are Na'Cyd, F'Lyr, the others?" called the curly-haired woman, standing her ground even as a gap opened on my right. "They could take him down . . . protect us."
"Come on . . . surround him . . . can't kill all of us."
". . . careful of the girl . . . she's an innocent. . . ."
"What do you want here?"
Somewhere a sword rasped on leather. Knives slipped free of their sheaths. Some passed stones from the rock garden from hand to hand, the sly motions rippling through the mob. I edged to the right. Words and illusions were not going to stay these people for long.
"Hold!" The command silenced the crowd and had the men and women craning their necks to discover its issuer, not because it was loud or harsh or portended evil, but because of the sheer authority that weighted each word. "For the office I once held, for the life and service I have given to Gondai, hear me."
On my left a few people shifted aside to reveal a tall man in a deep blue robe, his fair hair gathered into a silver clip at his neck. My father stepped slowly into the circle of light, his back straight, though the line of his shoulders was rigid and his face scribed with pain.
"Who are you?" demanded the bull-necked man.
"Can you fools not see?" A small man with a twisted back pushed his way out of the crowd on my right. Gripping his walking stick with two hands, he lowered himself onto one knee. "My lord Prince D'Natheil. All praise to Vasrin Shaper, who has laid down a Way that leads you back to Gondai in our time of need." Sefaro.
A murmuring tide of astonishment, wonder, and recognition washed through the mob. A few others genuflected or stepped back, marveling at the apparition of one they believed five years dead. Where was my mother?
My father held up his hand to quiet them. "This man before you is indeed my son," he said. "And it is no accident that the enchantments that shielded us from our pain—yes, mine as well as yours—have been shattered by his hand. But his power and his destiny are far beyond our control. We cannot hold him here, and I would not have your griefs compounded by violence this night. His concerns are elsewhere, so I believe he will not harm us further. Let him pass."
I felt the strength of his will holding him together. He could not smile. He could scarcely speak. Yet the faces of those around him changed. Apprehension, uncertainty, but no fear. Many of the people drew close to him, some with defiant faces as if to protect him, some with an awed trust, as if seeking the safety they had always believed rested in his arm.
But I was not comforted. Why didn't he tell them the truth? Why didn't he use his authority to tell these people that I had saved them once and was willing to do so again? Did he really think I wanted to hurt them? Gods, did he believe D'Sanya's charge that I wanted to kill him? I had counted on him understanding the imperative to destroy the oculus . . . forgiving me. Surely . . .
I searched his stern face for one hint of softness, one flicker of acknowledgment, of comprehension. But my father's expression revealed nothing . . . which revealed everything.
My spine stiffened. I backed away from the waiting Dar'Nethi, moving slowly toward a widening gap in the crowd, where the thick-growing rosebushes made it awkward to stay close to one's fellows. My eyes roamed the mob, straining to pick out faces and forms in the shifting light. Somewhere I would find the answer.
There! F'Lyr, the scar-faced stableman who wore a brass lion about his neck, stood with two shadowy figures at the back of the crowd near the gap. Three Zhid ready to close off the escape route before I could get through. Now I understood my father's ambiguity. He well knew the choice waiting for me at the edge of the shadows. My yearning to hear my father declare before witnesses that I was not the destined instrument of the Lords was a matter of no importance whatsoever. I would have to prove the truth or falsity of that prophecy for myself.
In an instant I considered all that had happened in the last weeks and months, all that I feared about myself and the doom facing Avonar, all that I knew of D'Sanya and the others who would be involved in the dreadful hours to come. The wrongness of the world tore at my spirit as fiercely as the flames ravaged D'Sanya's gracious house and garden. By some whim of fate or gods, I was the nexus, the center of everything, but I was dry and empty, and my father was dying and every being in three worlds was at risk. I would not survive another hour without power or understanding. The evidence was laid out in front of me and all I had to do was put it together in the span of three heartbeats. And to do so, I would have to go back; I would have to remember.
My hesitation emboldened the crowd. "If the hospice is closed, I'm a dead man anyway," said the bull-necked man, now brandishing a fence rail.
Others moved forward, rocks and knives in hand. I retreated a few more steps, poured the dregs of my power into my gray curtain to give me one extra moment to accomplish what I needed to do. The slight body in my arms stirred. I gripped her hard to hold her still and wished fervently that I could keep her safe. Jen had told me that memory had no power but what the soul chose to make of it. Why was I so tempted to believe her, when for so long I had doubted those infinitely wiser than either of us? Perhaps it was some magic hidden deep in her. Perhaps it was because for the first time in my life, I cared about living another day. I had only begun to taste possibility.
Wishing Jen were awake to tell me in her brittle tutor's manner that I did it right, I breathed deep and embraced the distorted world, along with the wholeness of past and present, what I was and what I had been, what I had seen and done and felt, both good and evil . . . everything I/we remembered.