I put such thoughts out of my mind. I had to trust someone.
But as more days passed, my doubts grew right alongside the calluses on my fingers. What had gone wrong? Why was there no attempt to retrieve me?
At the four-week mark, numb and terrified, I was sent to the Gray House once again, to deliver five gray tunics for the household slaves. Sefaro was in his storeroom, writing in a journal of some kind. His face brightened when he saw me.
“I’ve brought five tunics as ordered,” I said.
He nodded and inspected them carefully, then folded them and put them on one of his shelves.
“I’m also instructed by Kargetha to ask if it is time for the new banners to be made with the young Lord’s device? She has received no instructions.” I gave Sefaro the wooden token from Kargetha that would permit him to answer my questions.
“We’ve no need for the banners at present,” he said, after clearing his throat. His voice was rich and mellow. “The young Lord is no longer in residence.”
The slave reached out for my arm. “Are you quite all right, Eda?”
“Yes. Yes, of course.” Pressing my fingers to my lips, I fought back tears and terror until I could speak again. “I was just so surprised… that Kargetha didn’t know. She’ll want to know where he’s gone. And for how long.” Everything depended on Gerick being in Zhev’Na.
“Five days ago the young Lord rode off with a Zhid officer. I was not told when or if to expect him back.” His gaze held mine. “Tell Kargetha that I will be here taking care of matters as I have done these past weeks: the house, the kitchen, the fencing yard…” He smiled and raised his eyebrows, as if asking me whether I understood. Gerick’s wounded young sparring partner… I smiled weakly. I could not rejoice in anything.
For my first weeks in Zhev’Na, I had considered my true life as something apart and my existence as Eda the sewing Drudge only a moment’s aberration. But now this soul-deadening monotony encompassed my entire existence. The sewing women had lived this way for so long that I could find no tinder in them to answer what spark remained in me. They were uninterested in ideas or stories and called my attempts at conversation odd. When I suggested that we take a few moments before sleeping to clean the dormitory, so that perhaps the mice might find it less hospitable, I got only the blank stares and shrugs that might have followed an invitation to take wing and fly across the desert.
One afternoon, after I had tried to interest the sewing women in a simple game that might enliven the hours while we stitched, Zoe mentioned to Kargetha that I was distracting the others with my foolishness. The Zhid woman touched the tag on my ear and commanded me to cease my useless conversation. I had to do so, of course, as surely as if the compulsion had actually been attached to the tag. In the days of silence that followed her command, I speculated on whether the compulsions had really been put there after all. However would I know, when I dared not disobey?
After I had gone five days without a single word, Zoe mentioned to Kargetha that perhaps her command had been too effective. She had no objection to reasonable speech in the workroom, and I had made some useful suggestions about the work in the past. Kargetha was feeling indulgent that day and reworded her command. “I release you from my bond, Eda. Perhaps you are too stupid to know what is useless and what is not. Speak as you wish, unless two of your fellows tell you to be silent.”
“Thank you, your Worship,” I said, dipping my knee, but I didn’t resume my attempts. Two months had passed, and Gerick was gone, and I didn’t have anything to say any more. The prospect of living out the rest of my days in such a fashion was abhorrent. By comparison my years of poverty in Dunfarrie seemed endlessly stimulating. They had encompassed growth and change, the acquisition of new skills, the cycle of the seasons to mark the days… the height of the garden… the flight of birds… such beauty and variety. That I had considered life in Dunfarrie as near death as I could imagine pointed out a singular lack of imagination on my part. But then, who could ever have imagined the life of Zhev’Na?
CHAPTER 30
Gerick
One morning, after I had been in Zhev’Na for several months, I went down to the fencing yard ready to begin the day. I had been working with a new sword, not a rapier, but an edged blade, a war sword. It was fine-a one-handed blade with a deep fuller to keep it light, a sharpened, tapered tip, and a length that was exactly right for my height. With so many new things to learn-cutting and slashing movements, different kinds of thrusting, appropriate stances, footwork, and defenses-I made sure to arrive at the fencing yard early every day and stayed at least an hour longer than usual. Though Calador never admitted it, I knew I was making good progress.
Someone new stood waiting with Calador that morning. Like Calador he was a Zhid-one of the warriors of Zhev’Na with the strange eyes. He was very tall, and his thin red hair was combed straight back from a high forehead. His whole face was long and pointed, especially his nose. If he hadn’t been talking to Calador, I might have thought he had no mouth at all.
Calador bowed to me and to the tall man. “My lord Prince, may I introduce Kovrack, a gensei of the Lords’ armies-our highest military rank. Gensei Kovrack has been charged with the next phase of your training, that of military command. You are to live with the gensei in the war camp of Elihad Ru, and he will teach you how to lead your soldiers. I have been honored to be your swordmaster.”
“But wait…” I was just getting used to Calador and Harres and Murn, just beginning to improve so that maybe they would think I was worth something. I liked my house and my servants and my horses. I didn’t want to change things.
It is necessary, my young Lord, said Parven, inside me. You are to be the ruler of two worlds. You agreed to let us guide you in the accomplishment of your purposes, and we warned you that there were hard lessons to be learned. Your destiny is not to be comfortable. That will make you weak. Weakness-fear of true power-was the downfall of Avonar and the line of D’Arnath. Have we not made you more than the sniveling child you were?
Of course, he was right. They had made me better, harder, more like what I should be. I could run for an hour across the desert and still come back and win a fight. I could pin an opponent that outweighed me by half again and break his arm to boot. It didn’t make my stomach hurt any more when I cut a sparring partner’s legs so they wouldn’t hold him up, and I could seal the slave collar on a new captive without even hearing his screams or feeling anything but relief that there was one more of the Dar‘Nethi unable to kill kind old women. Even if Prince D’Natheil was dead, I would have my revenge on him. I had sworn my oath. “Of course, I’ll do whatever is necessary.”
We left the fortress immediately, without even returning to my house. All that I needed would be supplied, Kovrack told me as we rode into the desert.
Two leagues from the fortress was the heart of a Zhid encampment that stretched as far as I could see into the brown dust haze that was the horizon. I had been into the Zhid war camps only twice: once to see a new lot of horses delivered from the breeding farms, and once to watch the execution of a Zhid who had spared a captive Dar’Nethi from a punishment. The warrior’s commanders had staked him out on the ground and given him only enough water to keep him alive while he baked in the days and froze in the nights. Every day they would lash him until his flesh was shredded, and the wind blew sand into the wounds until you couldn’t tell he was a man. Every night they worked some sorcery that made him whole again. He was out there for days. By the time he died, he was mad.