Bareil said the palace was defended against hidden portals, so we would have to enter by one of its five gates. Almost an hour after leaving the inn, we stood across a courtyard from two slender towers that sheltered a single thick wooden gate into the palace precincts. This courtyard, tucked away behind the palace, almost hacked out of the rock of the mountainside, was not one of the commonly used entries, Bareil told me, but one used for prisoners being brought to the palace for trial or the royal family’s personal visitors who wished to be discreet. No guard was in sight.
“This gate is sealed except when it is needed,” said Bareil. “Guards are unnecessary except under a direct assault.”
“Then how are we to get in?”
He smiled up at me, and whispered, “This is your house, my lord. The locks and seals will know you.”
I hadn’t considered that I could just walk in. I was not stealing into a place where I had no legitimate business. If I wanted, I could stroll through the front doors of this place and proclaim myself home-though I didn’t think that would be clever.
We slipped around the shadowed edges of the courtyard and came to the great wooden door banded with steel. When I laid my hand on the thick latch, barbs of enchantment pricked my arm all the way to the shoulder.
“Press down as you would on any door handle,” said Bareil. “It should open to your hand.”
I did so. Nothing happened.
The Dulcé frowned. “I don’t understand. No one could change the locks without your permission, and you used this gate many times when you were a boy.”
True… In my first nine years, no one had ever really cared where I was or what I did, but fussy courtiers and tutors would forever attempt to ingratiate themselves with my father by reporting on my ignorance and undisciplined behavior. So I had sneaked away from them, down the narrow stair through kitchens and barracks and through the open doorway into the cluttered courtyard that lay on the other side of this very gate, knowing that everything I wanted awaited me just beyond it: freedom and adventure, weapons, combat, fear, blood, and death… war. Out on the walls of Avonar my friends the soldiers stared over the walls at the misty gray wall that was the Zhid encampment, gulped from flasks of ale, and laughed. I had wanted to laugh at fear and blood and death. No one in the palace would teach me how, but my friends, the soldiers, had. Yes, this was my door, in my house.
I pressed down again. This time the brass handle moved smoothly and quietly, and the massive gate swung open without the slightest pressure from my hand.
Now I led Bareil. Across the courtyard, through the labyrinthine way to the stair behind the kitchens. Only a few voices echoed through the passages-guards and servants who cared for the palace itself and functionaries who performed the hard daily work of governing. No royalty had lived in the palace since I’d been taken to Exeget when I was nine.
Our destination was not the living quarters I had so rarely graced, but the Chamber of the Gate, buried deep in the roots of the mountain underneath the palace. Downward and inwards, through minor galleries and guest quarters, past armories and long-silent ballrooms, into the ancient heart of the palace, burrowed deep into the rock. The stone of these corridors had not been cut and laid by any mason, even one who could cut with his singing or polish with a brush of his hand. Rather the walls were native stone that had been shaped and smoothed until the sworls of jasper and lapis shone of their own colored light. My steps accelerated.
I thought we’d made a wrong turn when the passage we traversed ended in a blank wall. But before I could turn to Bareil, the stone shifted-a mightily unsettling sight-and revealed a door of age-darkened wood that swung open at my touch. I had forgotten the door wards. Beyond the door lay the circular chamber of white and rose, its ceiling lost in white frost plumes. Only when I stepped through the door could I see the Gate-a towering curtain of white flame, rippling, shifting, shimmering, reaching exuberantly for the heights in the uncertain light. Cold fire that left the room frigid and sparkling like the clearest of winter mornings. Rumbling fire, exploding geysers of flaming brilliance that created constantly shifting patterns. Though the fire didn’t terrify me as it had when I was twelve, it still took my breath away. This was the legacy of my ancestors, one endpoint of a link that spanned the universe itself. My soul swelled and thrilled and wept all at once with the glory of it.
Bareil gave me the rose-colored stone. As he had instructed, I roused it to glowing life, creating a pool of warmth in the hollow of my hand. Then, with will and power, I shaped the path of the Bridge that lay beyond the Gate, so that it would lead me to the stone that matched the one I held.
“Shall I await your return, my lord? No one will alter the Gate path while I live.”
I had to leave the pink stone behind to keep the return path open. If anyone removed it from the chamber or reworked my enchantment, then I would have to travel to the Exiles’ Gate-the mundane world’s counterpart of this, the Heir’s Gate-in order to return to Avonar. That might be a journey of many days, depending on where the Lady Seriana was to be found. But I dared not get separated from Bareil and the information he carried.
I shook my head, unable to speak while I held the enchantment in my mind. Motioning him to leave the stone and stay close, I stepped through the curtain of fire and onto the Bridge that was my singular inheritance.
CHAPTER 12
Seri
Gerick was my son. Karon’s son. My heart stumbled on the words, yet of their truth I had no doubt. There was no other answer to the puzzle he was.
Had Tomas known it? Surely not. Law and custom had convinced him that my child had to die for the safety of our king and his realm, and Darzid had convinced him that his own knife must do the deed. Not even the knowledge of his own child’s frailty would have persuaded him to spare a sorcerer’s child. Yet, I wondered… Had there been somewhere within my brother a mote of suspicion, a seed of doubt that never made its way to the light of his waking mind, but blossomed into the incessant nightmares and overpowering dread that made him beg me to return to Comigor? Never could he have permitted that seed to grow into the light, for it would have told him that the babe he had murdered was his own. If my fear and grief had left me any tears, I would have wept for Tomas.
On the evening of my discovery, I paced the library, waiting for news. The cabinets that had housed the lead soldiers gaped at me in reproach.
Every servant and soldier of Comigor had been called to the hunt. Troops of guardsmen scoured the Montevial road, inquiring for Darzid or the boy at every private or public house all the way to the capital. Other soldiers and servants followed every road, trail, and footpath that came anywhere near the castle. Giorge and his assistants were querying the tenants. I had done everything it was possible to do. Now I had to wait-until the last man came back and told me he’d found nothing. I knew it would be so. I had no idea of Darzid’s capabilities, but every instinct screamed that they would be enough to hide Gerick from one who had no talent but that of her own prideful imaginings. Where would he take a sorcerer’s child? Dassine had said that Zhid could not cross the Bridge without the complicity of powerful sorcerers in Avonar… but Zhid had crossed the Bridge last summer, and Darzid had been hunting with them. What if Zhid could take Gerick across the Bridge?
I slammed the door of the soldiers’ cabinet so hard one glass pane shattered.
I had dreaded telling Philomena. When I had gone to her room that afternoon, I’d found her sitting up in bed, a maid brushing her hair. Her fingers toyed idly with the gray silk bag in which I’d brought her the lock of Tomas’s hair. All evidence of her dead infant had been stripped from the room. Not the least trace remained of that short, sweet life, and I wondered if anyone had given the little girl a word of farewell as she was laid in the frozen earth. “I’m so sorry about your daughter, Philomena,” I said.
“Gerick has run away, hasn’t he?” she said calmly, not taking her eyes from the gray silk that was wound about her fingers.