“Wake the boy and get you gone-all of you.” Karon’s quiet self-assurance-or was it D’Natheil’s?-implied the discussion was ended. “I’ll take care of the vermin and join you down the road.”
“Indeed you will not,” I said. “Dassine gave you a task to do.” No purposeless gesture was going to endanger the life of my child.
“Such brutes must not be allowed to enjoy the fruits of their crimes.”
He stepped toward Kellea and the cave mouth, but I dodged into his path, blocking the exit. “This is not your business,” I said. “If you set out to right every wrong in this land, you’ll be as old as D’Arnath before you’ve even begun.”
“But I can take care of this one,” he said, trying to step past me.
I didn’t budge. “Your responsibilities are far more important than petty vengeance.”
Anger flared in his blue eyes. “My responsibilities are with me every moment. I must do what I think is right.”
Like lightning in a dry forest, his words sparked such a blaze of anger in me that I lost all caution. “You must do what is most important. The child you were sent to save is two days’ journey ahead of us, perhaps more than that by now. His safety is your responsibility. Nothing else. You will not abandon him to his fate, not this time.”
“Madam, please… have a care…” Bareil stepped in between Karon and me.
But caution had deserted me. “As for the rest of us, Kellea must lead you to the child, and Bareil holds the keys to your reason. They cannot be put at risk. Paulo and I are the only ones who can be spared to aid you, and I’ll carry Paulo down this mountain on my back before I’ll allow you to sacrifice another life to your moral certainties. We will go down now. All of us.”
Karon stared at me, as white and still as if I’d stabbed him. His sword slipped from his hand into the dirt. I crouched down to the scatter of pots and blankets beside Paulo. Hands shaking, I wadded up the blood-soaked rags, rolled up blankets, emptied and stacked pots and cups, cramming everything into the scuffed leather bags and panniers.
After an interminable silence, the others moved as well. Kellea shook Paulo’s shoulder with hushed urgency and helped the groggy boy pull on her spare wool leggings, the two of them whispering, marveling at the pale white scars on his straight leg. As I poked at the refuse in some ridiculous attempt to cover the evidence of our stay, the two of them saddled the horses in the back of the cave.
I glanced over at Karon again. He stood rigid, scarcely breathing, his bloodless hands clenched and pressed to his forehead, eyes squeezed shut. What had I done?
Bareil murmured to Karon, one hand on Karon’s shoulder and the other gesturing to the fire and the cave. Moments passed. With guilty satisfaction, I watched Karon start moving again. He retrieved his weapon and sheathed it, and then began to work with the fire, dousing its flames with a motion of his hand, leaving it cold and dead, unable to bear witness to our presence. A cold wind swirled through the cave, dispersing the smoke and the scent of the horses, masking our footsteps with cold ash and sand and a dusting of snow. The blessed Dulcé stayed close to him, murmuring in his ear, having no eye or word for anyone else.
After only a quarter of an hour, we were riding on the steep, downward trail, Bareil in the saddle behind Paulo, Kellea leading the packhorse, Karon at the back, riding the extra mount we’d brought for Gerick. Every little while I sensed a brush of enchantment; behind us the snow on the trail appeared undisturbed. As the tense silence continued, a frowning Paulo looked from one of us to the other.
I couldn’t think of anything to say. No words could soften the sting of the ones already spoken. But I’d done only what was necessary. If it was too much for his fragile mind, best to know it now.
Once on the gentler trails in the sheltering trees, we picked up speed, riding at a brisk walk for several hours through the frosty woodland, making good time on a decent hard-packed road that headed northwest along the side of a gently sloping ridge. The sun was well past the zenith when we came to a sunny, snow-patched meadow, and Kellea called a halt. “We should rest the horses,” she said. “We’ve had no sign of pursuit, so I think we’re out of danger. And there’s a crossroads up ahead; I need to take my bearings.”
Though I could not bear the thought of slowing, I knew the wisdom of preserving both horses and riders.
“I’ll see to the horses,” Paulo said, dropping from the saddle easily and reaching for my reins.
“You should rest for a while,” I said, taking his reins instead. “We’ll care for your horses this time.” With a little persuasion, Paulo sat on a log and allowed me to provide him with enough cheese and oatcakes for three men. While Bareil collected the animals and led them to the water, Karon strode down through the muddy snowfield and leafless tangle of vines and willow thicket toward the stream, stretched out on a sunny rock, and closed his eyes without a word to anyone.
“How are you feeling?” I asked, when Paulo had slowed his intake to a reasonable pace.
The boy’s eyes shone as he stretched both legs out in front of him and stared at them as if they were forged of gold. “He put it all back straight. Don’t hurt a bit. And he fixed the other one, too, as has never been right since I was born. I thought I was done for, and now I’m whole. I don’t even have the right things to say about how it is with me.”
His brow clouded as he looked down by the stream where Karon lay on the rock. “But he didn’t remember Sunlight. I told him as I had been taking good care of him since he left. Never thought he’d forget that horse. Horse didn’t forget him, not by a long ways.” The boy glanced up at me. “Didn’t think he’d forget you neither.”
I sat on the log beside Paulo, pulled an apple from my pocket and stared at it, discovering that my own appetite had entirely disappeared. Stuffing the apple away again, I tried to explain that, although the Prince had finally remembered a great number of things that he couldn’t when he was with us before, it unfortunately meant he no longer recalled anything about our journey together. “If he asks you questions about it, you can answer him. But it would be best not to volunteer too much. It makes his head hurt.”
“Guess it would,” said the boy thoughtfully, “having things goin‘ in and out all the time. It’s easier with people like me.” He tapped his head. “Not much doin’ in here. But then I don’t have to bother with nothing but my belly and my horses. If Sheriff’d just quit fussing at me about learning to read, I could do without my noggin altogether.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. Paulo always had a wonderfully pragmatic perspective.
CHAPTER 15
Karon
I knew our destination. From the moment I followed the lady and the Dulcé out of the cave and saw Karylis baring its hoary white chest to the blue of the northern sky, I knew it. Karylis, where I had learned to hunt, to climb, and to heal, the mountain that spread its mighty arms and embraced the fertile valley where I was born.
Hundreds of years in the past, my people-Dar’Nethi sorcerers exiled from a world they had forgotten and condemned as outlaws in this world-sought out places where they could begin a new life. Three families, including that from which I am descended, came to Karylis with its sweet air, rich soil, and clear rivers, and from their settlement grew a city of grace and beauty that they called Avonar. No man or woman of them could remember why they revered that name, only that it was a part of each one of them, so precious that it came to every tongue unbidden. They had long lost their memories of the other Avonar, the royal city of the world called Gondai, whence their ancestors had been sent here to maintain D’Arnath’s Bridge.
We were never very many. Of the thousands who lived in Avonar when I was a youth, probably fewer than three hundred were sorcerers, but you could not walk through the streets without seeing the wonders our people had created there: the gardens that bloomed long after frost, graceful roads and bridges that did not age or crumble, a society of generous people who lived in mutual respect and civilized discourse.