“One more thing,” he said, as he moved to the bed, his eyelids already half closed. “You must destroy the portal that connects this place with Master Dassine’s house and the palace courtyard, lest someone follow us here. Command me, and I can tell you how to accomplish it.”
And so I did. By the time I had stepped down the passage to the spot where we had entered, fumbled my way through the destructive enchantment Bareil had given me, and returned to the sunny little room, the Dulcé was deeply asleep.
I spent the ensuing hours in the most elemental fashion- eating and wishing I could not think. Dassine, the child, the murderer… Several times that afternoon I came close to the precipice and had to tiptoe backward.
What was I to do about Exeget? If my old mentor had killed Dassine, then he would die for it. Yet such conviction in a matter of life-taking disgusted me. As I had relived the past in these months with Dassine, coming of age in the mundane world, traveling its poorest places and learning of suffering and the art of healing, I had come to the conclusion that for a Healer to take a life was unforgivable. And to do it for so crass a purpose as vengeance doubly condemned the act. But neither could I support mercy in this case.
The Lords had begun this war. A thousand years ago Notole, Parven, and Ziddari, three close friends, all of them powerful Dar’Nethi sorcerers, had discovered a new method of gathering power for sorcery, more efficient, they said, than the slow accumulation of experience, the acceptance and savoring of life that we called the Dar’Nethi Way. They had devised a way to borrow the life essence from plants or trees or animals, and once they had used it to build their power, to return the essence to its source, leaving the source richer, more beautiful, more complete than it had been before. In joy, excitement, and deserved pride in their talents, they claimed that with such an increase in our abilities, we Dar’Nethi would be able to heal the sorrows of the universe.
But our king and his Preceptors, as well as many other wise men and women, judged that such practice was a dangerous and risky perversion, a temptation too easily distorted. All of nature was balance: light and dark, summer and winter, land and sea, intellect and passion, even as our god Vasrin was both male and female, Creator and Shaper. If the return of essence enriched the source, then something else must be diminished-and thus the balance of the world disrupted. Every enchantment had its price, and King D’Arnath forbade them to continue until we understood the cost of what they did.
Disappointed, but not ready to forego their greatest accomplishment, the three proceeded in secret, planning a monumental working designed to convince everyone of the innocence and rightness of their ideas-using themselves as the objects of their enchantment. But, as the wise had predicted, it all went wrong. Catastrophe. Oh, the three had indeed become immensely powerful, even immortal, so the stories said-Lords, they called themselves. But they had not returned anything of beauty to the world. They had left themselves, our beauteous land, and the universe itself corrupt and broken. Untold thousands of our people who had been in the path of their destruction had been transformed into soulless Zhid. All the realms of Gondai had been destroyed in the Catastrophe or the war that followed, only the High King D’Arnath’s royal city and the nearby Vales of Eidolon enduring, surrounded by a desert wasteland.
How could it be wrong to destroy the Lords or the tools they used to draw the rest of us into their corruption? If Exeget had killed Dassine, then he would kill others, and I was sworn to protect the people of both worlds. The argument left my skull ready to crack.
At dusk, I woke Bareil. Odd to be on the shaking end of it, rather than the shaken. “The sun is taking itself off, Dulcé,” I said, “and I think we must do the same.”
“You’ve let me sleep too long.”
“I’ve just recently been reminded of how blessed it is to get a full measure.”
“So what to do, my lord?”
“I must find out about this child.”
“Command me.”
I shared out bread and cold chicken from the pack, and filled two cups with hot, pungent saffria from the small urn sitting on the table. As we ate, I commanded Bareil, “Detan detu, madrissé. Tell me of the child that is lost.” Such were the proper words to unlock the knowledge of a Dulcé.
He considered for a moment. “I’m sorry, my lord, but I know nothing of a child that is lost.”
“Abducted, then. Any abducted child?” One had to be very specific when trying to access information that was not at the front of the Dulcé‘s mind. “Or any connection of an abducted child with me or with my family?”
“There have been many cases of children abducted by the Zhid, but nothing to distinguish one from another.” Deep in thought, he pulled a bite of meat from the chicken leg. “Throughout history the Zhid have tried to abduct royal children as they do other Dar’Nethi children. None of those attempts have been successful. In the years before Master Exeget took you under his protection, there were three attempts to abduct you. I know of no specific connection of any abducted child with you or your family.”
I came at the problem from a different tack. “Tell me of the place called Zhev’Na.”
Bareil laid down his bread and set his cup aside. “Since the Catastrophe, we have called the ruined lands Ce Uroth-the Wastes-or, as those who serve the Lords say, the Barrens. Zhev’Na is the stronghold of the Lords in the heart of Ce Uroth. Dassine believed it was one of the great houses ruined by the Catastrophe, but even if that is true, no one knows which one or where to find it.”
So Dassine knew, or feared, that the Lords had taken this mysterious child. But Bareil had already told me that he knew nothing of any child taken by the Zhid.
“Do we know why the Zhid capture children?”
“To steal an enemy’s children has a profoundly demoralizing effect. It destroys his hope for the future and often will make him act rashly. In addition, Master Dassine surmised that children are especially susceptible to the corruption of the Lords. Some Zhid commanders are Dar’Nethi who were captured as children and raised in Zhev’Na under the tutelage of the Three. Only when they came of age, their minds twisted by the life they had led, were they made Zhid-the most wicked of all their commanders. And, of course, the Zhid can no longer produce children of their own, a condition that manifested itself in the early centuries of the war. The enchantments of the Lords are in opposition to creation-to life-so Master Dassine explained it.”
As the daylight faded, lingering in the pearly glow given off by the paving stones of the city, I tried a hundred more questions, sideways, backward, arranging and rearranging them to elicit any scrap of information about one particular unlucky boy. To no avail. Dassine had made no references to any living child save the child I had been.
The luminous commard outside the window emptied and fell quiet. Bareil told me that even with the more peaceful times of the past few months, people were not accustomed to going about freely at night. The Seeking of the Zhid- the creeping invasion of the soul that led to despair-had always been strongest in the dark hours. Watchers yet manned the walls at night, but had neither seen any sign of the Zhid nor felt their Seeking since I had returned from the mundane world after doing… whatever I had done there.
“Stars of night, what does he expect of me?” I flopped onto the rumpled bedcovers, burying my face and my confusion. Dassine had said Bareil was the one who could help me. He must have thought it would be easy, or he would have slipped in some further word of instruction, even in his last distress. I rolled to my back. “Detan detu, madrissé. Tell me the ways Master Dassine gave you to help me. Anything more than the expected things like answering questions and leading me around the city.”
Bareil nodded. “Master Dassine has allowed me to know the reasons for your present condition, and the means he has used to cause it and to remedy it. He has permitted me to know what things it might do you harm to know before you remember them properly, and what things would be of more benefit than harm. He has given me the purposes and instructions for the use of the device which we collected-the pink stone-and the second device which you must allow me to hold safe until the time is right for me to explain its history. He has entrusted me with the knowledge of shifting the exit point of the Bridge and several other such matters which may be spoken only in your presence, else my tongue will become mute for the duration of my life. He has entrusted me with the complete story of his sojourn in the Wastes, which he has told to no other living person, and how you must use his knowledge to chart your course for the future. He has entrusted me with the knowledge of those men and women that he mistrusts and those whom he trusts. Shall I go on?”