How do you measure desire? Those things left behind? To leave this physical being was not an obstacle; I’d grown to no comfort with it. To abandon my work, the memories of two lives so dearly bought in these past months, gave me no pause. The friends and family who populated my past were but ghosts who would be exorcised with the passage of that distant marker-the light that now shot violet, mauve, and purple trailers to either side, up, down, right, left in this directionless universe of darkness… so far away, teasing, tantalizing, luring me from all other concern. My kingdom? “I’m a cripple, half a madman, no matter what Dassine says. Better they find someone whole to lead them.” Like long, thin fingers, the silent bursts of color beckoned.
How do you measure desire? Those things to be endured? The void itself was colder than the winter morning on which I had waked unbidden, but the perimeters of my being burned-not the cold fire of the smeared stars, not the colored fire of the distant aurora, but a conflagration that seared through the barriers of memory… from the boundaries of reason. Roaring, agonizing fire… hot iron about my wrists and ankles eating its way through flesh and bone… I was enveloped in darkness, abandoned in unbounded pain and horror. The tongue I had so carelessly wished away cried out, yet I would endure even this if I could but pass beyond the barrier of light…
Karon, my son, do not… not yet. Come back. From outside the holocaust called a voice so faint… almost unheard against the roar of the fire and my own cries.
Dassine. My mentor, my healer, my jailer. I had to tell him where I was going. If he understood about this hunger, about the beckoning fingers of amber and blue, he wouldn’t hold me. I didn’t belong with Dassine. But he didn’t answer my call, and I could not ignore his summoning. I dropped the crystal, and the world rushed back…
My robe was drenched with sweat. Shaking, chilled, I stepped back from the fallen artifact that lay so innocently on the floor. Once I’d found Dassine, I would come back for it. “Dassine! Are you here?” I called. No answer.
Two doors opened out of the lectorium. One led into the garden, the other to a short flight of steps and the passage that took one into the main part of the rambling house. Taking the second, I wandered down the passageways, peering into the rooms to either side. Dassine was nowhere in the house. I wandered back to the lectorium, stopping in the kitchen long enough to grab a chunk of bread, a slab of ham, and two pears from the larder. As I sat at the worktable and ate the bread and ham, I stared at the odd device that lay on the floor and hovered so disturbingly on the peripheries of my thoughts. What could be the purpose of such a thing?
Karon…
I almost missed it. The call was half audible and half in my mind, and its origin was behind the second door, the door to the garden. Fool! I hadn’t looked there. I yanked the door open. Tangled in his cloak, Dassine lay huddled against the wall, a trail of blood-streaked snow stretching behind him to the garden gate. His lips were blue, and only the barest breath moved his chest and the bloody wound that gaped there.
“Oh, gods, Dassine!” I carried him into the study and laid him on the couch by the cold hearth. With a word and the flick of my fingers, the pile of twigs and ash in the fireplace burst into flames, and I bundled him in everything I could find that might warm him. He shuddered, and his eyes flew open. Blood seeped from his chest. Too much of it.
A knife… I needed a knife and a strip of linen.
“No!” The old man gripped my wrist. “I forbid it! I need to tell you-”
“But I can heal you,” I said. “The power is in me.” Even as I spoke I gathered power… from my fear… from the bitter winter… from the pain and awe and terror of my vision. I just needed to make the link…
“No use. No time.” His voice was harsh and low, broken with strident breaths. “Listen to me. They have the child.”
“What child? Why-?”
“No time… everything is changed. Your only task… find the child. Save him. Only one… only one can help…” His words came ragged… desperate… “Bareil… your guide…”
“Who’s done this to you?” I would not listen to words that rang so of finality. “Tell me who.” And when I knew, that one would die.
“No, no, fool! Leave it be. If they take… boy to Zhev’Na, then… oh, curse it all… no time… the only way…” He faltered, choking as blood bubbled out of the corner of his mouth. I thought he was gone, but he snarled and forced the words past his clenched jaw. “If they take the boy to Zhev’Na, give yourself… to the Preceptorate.”
“But-”
“Go defenseless. Tell them… ready to be examined. Let it play out. The only way. The only way…” His cold hand touched my face tenderly, his voice sunk to a ferocious whisper, his eyes boring holes in my own. “Dearest son, do not use the crystal. Not until you are whole, and you have the boy. Promise me.”
“Dassine-”
“Promise me!” he bellowed, grabbing my robe and raising himself off the cushions.
“Yes, yes, I promise.”
He jerked his head and sagged onto the cushions, his eyelids heavy, the grip on my robe relaxing. I did not beg or argue or rage about how little I understood. He had no strength to remedy my ignorance. But his finger fluttered against my arm, and I bent close to hear him. With a sighing breath, he whispered, “Trust me.” And then he breathed no more.
My friend, my mentor, my keeper. Without thought of Bridge or worlds or any of the larger consequences of his passing, I held the old man in my arms until the sun was high. Though keeping vigil with the dead for half a day was the Dar’Nethi custom, love, not custom, compelled me to stay with him. Dassine had willingly forfeited every last drop of his life’s essence to give me his instruction. No Healer could bring him back before he crossed the Verges.
Eventually, I laid Dassine in his garden, hacking at the frozen ground until my arms could scarcely raise pick or shovel. When I was done, I sat beside the grave, sweat and anger hardening into ice. I tried to recall everything he’d said, while trying to ignore how empty the world had become.
It is said that those who live long in close companionship come to anticipate each other’s words and actions, and even that one of the pair comes to resemble the other in physical appearance. If such were true, then surely when I next looked in a glass, I would see wild, gray-streaked eyebrows sprouting from my face. Only now did I realize how closely bound our minds had been. Lacking his abundant presence, my thoughts felt thin and watery. Whatever else I retrieved of the years still missing, I vowed to learn someday how we had become so close.
So what to do? Nothing made sense. I could believe Dassine’s last words were the product of delirium had it been anyone but Dassine who voiced them. A mysterious child to be saved from someone I didn’t know. Someone named Bareil to guide me. No doubt that I needed help, but who was Bareil and where was he to be found? I had heard his name before… yes, the brandy. “Bareil’s best.” Dassine had spoken as if I should know him, but I’d met no one in Avonar save the Preceptors, the six…
No… a seventh person had been in that room when I met the Preceptors-a Dulcé. So perhaps he didn’t mean an ordinary guide, but a madrissé. With their strange intellectual limitations, Dulcé on their own did not figure in the equations of power in Gondai. But a Dulcé could give a Dar’Nethi a significant advantage in life’s games by placing his immense capacity for knowledge at that person’s service. When a Dulcé bound himself in this rare and privileged relationship, he was called a madrissé, one whose knowledge and insights could guide the Dar’Nethi in decision-making. Bareil was likely Dassine’s madrissé. He would have been the other presence I had felt in Dassine’s house, the note-taker, the user of the third bowl, the one who would drink brandy with Dassine while I was enraptured with candlelight and the past. He could hold a number of answers, if only I could find him. To imagine it was a comfort.
In the matter of the crystal, I had to follow Dassine’s judgment. From the corner of my mind where I had pushed the unsettling experience, the fingers of light beckoned dangerously, causing my blood to churn. When I was whole, Dassine had said, implying that such was still possible. The crystal, whatever it was, would have to wait. I had promised him.