Then, just as abruptly as they began, his struggles ceased and he slipped into his obscene deadness once more. He was trembling, exhausted, as the abominations fell from his lips. My own tears flowed unchecked. Unable to justify his torment any longer, I hammered on the door to summon the warden.
"You are not abandoned, J'Savan," I said, as I listened to the approaching footsteps and the clicking of the lock. "I know you're in there, and you must hold on however you can. You are not responsible for what happened to your friends. I believe that as dearly as I believe anything in this world."
As the Dar'Nethi warder invoked the words of enchantment that would drop blessed oblivion over the wretched youth, the whisper faded. "Danger, danger, danger. Bury it deep. . . ."
Was there any meaning in what I'd heard? The wardens, Healers, and Archivists thought not. Nothing of his condition or his ramblings were included in the report I'd read in the Archive. The investigators would have considered him unreliable, V'Rendal had said. Why include the ravings of a madman?
But on my journey back to Avonar, J'Savan's words scribed themselves on my thoughts, refusing to be dismissed until I set them down with pen and ink in the serenity of Aimee's firelit sitting room. Not every word, not the exact order, but I believed I captured their essence. When I laid down my pen late that night, I sat back in my chair and contemplated what I had written.
On the next morning, I dispatched a letter to Eu'Vian by the first messenger Aimee could summon, and I could not settle to any task for the two days until the answer came back from the edge of the Wastes.
To my diligent acquaintance S'Rie, greetings,
In answer to your questioning: On the day he was stricken with his terrible affliction, J'Savan had gone out alone to tend a small grove of trees he had planted. The trees were dying after taking a vigorous, healthy start. J'Savan thought they might have root rot —perhaps he had drawn the groundwater too near. He was planning to inspect the roots to learn the problem. As I told you, he did not return until nightfall when he attacked us with murderous intent .
Yes, as it happens the grove was very near the place where he first met the Lady D'Sanya. She remembered it when she came to visit us after hearing of J'Savan's terrible illness, even visiting the spot for a time to mourn the boy. Her gentle soul was much affected by J'Savan's state and our tragedy.
You did not ask, but if the other matters are of interest to you —which I do not understand why, but presume you have reasons —then you may wish to know that the rootlings fare well. J'Savan must have done his work before he was affected, as his grove thrives. He was very good at his work and a cheerful spirit. We miss him sorely, as well as our brothers and sister who lie dead as a result of his affliction .
J hope your history work proceeds well, and that Mistress V'Rendal is satisfied with my saying.
Eu'Vian
What had J'Savan found when he went to tend his rootling trees? What danger had he discovered that had so shattered the harmony of his life that he was driven to acts against nature? And what was the connection to D'Arnath's daughter? The answer was close. Though I could not find it in the rambling words of the mad Gardener, I knew it was there, and I had no doubt that it mortally threatened my son and my husband, and the worlds at either end of D'Arnath's Bridge.
Chapter 16
A few days after Eu'Vian's letter, I received a message from V'Rendal saying that the Arcanist Garvй would be able to see me that evening. She warned me yet again that to seek out an Arcanist for minor inquiries was most unwise. She herself had not visited Garvй in many years. But the sight of the poor young Gardener had hardened my resolve.
Garvй's house surprised me. I had assumed that such a powerful sorcerer must have a fine and formidable residence. But the little stone house was squat and ugly, set in the midst of a ruined part of the city, an area of fire-blackened rubble thickly overgrown with weeds that had not been cleaned up since the end of the war. With the Dar'Nethi drifting out of the city, the space wasn't yet needed, and a great many things had higher priority than cleaning up a thousand years of debris. The house seemed to fade in and out of sight in the oncoming dusk.
The man who appeared at the door to answer my knock was as disheveled as his surroundings and almost as dirty. His scholar's ankle-length robe hung open, revealing a baggy shirt and trousers of indeterminate shape. Layers of food, wine, soot, paint, and other unnamable stains prevented one from guessing the original color of any of the garments. The limbs that protruded from this unappetizing garb were stick-thin, and his hacked-off hair resembled nothing so much as a boar's-hair scrubbing brush well past its usable lifetime. I couldn't see his face, as his nose was pressed into a ragged-edged book he held in one hand.
"Well?" I wasn't sure if this greeting was directed at me, at the fat one-eared cat he kicked back into the house when it tried to squeeze between him and the door, or at the tattered volume from which he had not yet removed his eyes.
I reread the slip of paper in my hand to make sure I'd got the location correct. This was the only likely place. "Master Garvй? I am S'Rie. The Archivist V'Rendal has sent me to see you."
"Well?" The low, throaty rumble seemed out of proportion to his slight frame. His eyes had not yet moved from the book.
"Have you a few moments to speak with me about a matter of interest to V'Rendal?"
"It's not hot is it? Won't work when it's hot."
Hot? "Excuse me, I've come to inquire about an enchantment, Master Garvй." I knew I wasn't making a good start, though I felt it would be a lot easier to make sense of things if he would just look at me.
"The sallй that you've brought. V'Rendal always remembers it. It mustn't be hot."
Sallй . . . "Oh, yes, of course!"
I pulled a finger-high, frost-rimed green bottle from my pocket. It almost froze my fingers to touch it. V'Rendal had informed me that Garvй was immoderately fond of sallevichia, a rare, expensive and violently spicy condiment made in the Vale of Nimrolan. Aimee had helped me find some of the stuff to bring him as a consideration. "No. It's still quite cold," I said.
Still without looking up from his book, Garvй snatched the bottle from my hand, whirled about, and disappeared into the house. As he had accepted my gift and had not shut the door, I felt only slightly awkward about following him inside. Although the house seemed quite a bit larger on the inside than it appeared from without, I could scarcely find a path between all the boxes, baskets, and furniture. Chairs and tables had been piled with every sort of item from birdcages to harps, spools of thread and wire to wheelbarrows, and unending stacks of books, reams of paper, and boxes of pens, tools, trinkets, and feathers. The soft blue light of evening through the uncurtained windows kept me from tripping over any of this clutter as I followed the gangly figure through the house.
We emerged in a stifling, brick-floored kitchen that looked as if a whirlwind had recently passed through it. Alongside a huge, soot-blackened baking oven of red brick lay a disarray of dented kettles, spilled flour, and mounds of dubious vegetables. Long worktables had been set around the periphery of the room and piled halfway to the ceiling with more books, broken pots, at least five sleeping cats, bottles, wooden boxes and glass jars of every possible size, and what appeared to be endless piles of scraps: of fabric, metal, glass, leather, rock, leaves, twigs, dirt, paper . . . Yet around and above the disorder hung the savory smell of baking bread. My stomach growled.