Before very long, I heard no footsteps but our own. Bareil sighed and drew us into a sheltered alcove. “Vasrin Creator,” he said, panting, “never has my heart pounded so. But we’ve lost them in spite of it. Can you lead us?” he asked Kellea.
The girl shook her head in disgust. “You’d do better to ask Paulo. I’ve lost all sense of the boy since we stepped past the fire. There’s… too much here. It’s as if someone dropped a bag over my head and stuffed it with noise.”
“Well, we can either return to the Chamber of the Gate or proceed to a hiding place where D’Natheil and I have agreed to meet if ever we are separated.”
No. No. No. “No retreat,” I said, forcing my voice low, but firm. “Not until Gerick is safe.” Dread weighed in my belly like an anvil.
“I agree,” said Kellea. “And I prefer a place that has more than one usable exit.”
The Dulcé nodded. “Very well. Then you must do exactly as I say. All right?” Though he wrinkled his face seriously at Paulo, a smile danced in his almond-shaped eyes. “This place may seem strange.”
The boy shrugged and pulled down his hat. “I’ve been about. Seen lots of things lately nobody’d believe.”
“We’ll not be remarked if we seem sure of ourselves and don’t gawk.” The Dulcé led our ragged group through passageways and deserted kitchens and dusty storerooms to an iron gate. Past the gate was a dimly lit, cloistered courtyard, the sheltered walkways lined by a double row of slender columns. A few trees grew in garden beds, thick-branched evergreens with long needles, but of no variety I recognized. Their light dusting of snow sparkled in the glow of white lanterns mounted on the cloister walls.
I grabbed the Dulcé‘s arm. “Before we go further, Bareil. Tell us. Where are we?” I needed to hear him say it before I could believe.
“Have you not guessed, my lady?” He smiled. “We’ve come to Gondai. You walk in Avonar.”
CHAPTER 17
Gerick
I guess I have been scared my whole life. When I was little, I was scared of the dark, and Lucy always left me a candle or stayed with me until I went to sleep. And I was scared that when I grew up to be a soldier, I’d end up with only one arm or one leg or with my eye cut out like the men that came back from the war. But Papa told me that if I worked hard at sword training then I’d never have to be crippled like that. So I decided to train harder than anyone, though I knew I would never be as good as he was. Everyone said he was the best in the world.
Of course, I didn’t really know what being scared was until the night Lucy caught me making the lead soldiers march around Papa’s library. It was terrific fun, and I wondered why Papa hadn’t shown me how to do it earlier that evening when he’d finally said I was old enough to play with them. The idea of it came to me when I was in bed. I couldn’t sleep for wanting to try it, so I crept downstairs after Lucy had turned down the lamp and gone to bed. Mama and Papa had guests, so nobody would bother me in the library. Well, Lucy must’ve come back to the nursery to check on me that night. She ran down to the library- she was always good at guessing what I was thinking-and she saw what I was up to.
I never saw anyone so afraid. I thought she would be pleased like she was when I learned how to turn a somersault, or how to ride my horse without falling off, or how to write my name without getting ink all over. But on that night, if someone had given her a voice, she would have screamed every bit of it away again. She backed up against the door, looking like she wanted to run away, but instead she waved her arms and shook her head and pointed to the soldiers.
“But Lucy, it’s all right. Honest. Just tonight Papa told me I could use them,” I said, showing her how I could make the silver king climb over my leg.
But she wouldn’t hear anything or even move until I let them all drop down still. Then she ran over and held me tight until I thought I was going to be squashed. She was crying and rocking me like I was a baby even though I was five years old.
I didn’t like her to cry. Mostly Lucy and I had the best time. She knew lots of fun things to do, and of course because she was mute, she couldn’t yell or whine like Mama. Even if she thought I’d done something bad, she’d just show me again how to do it right and give me her “disappointed” look. I had never made her cry before. I told her over and over that I was sorry that I was out of my bed, but I just wasn’t sleepy and thought it wouldn’t hurt to play with the soldiers a while, since Papa did say I was old enough.
She acted like she didn’t even hear what I said, like she was thinking of something else altogether, something that she didn’t like at all, and she made me put the soldiers away and go back to the nursery with her. We sat by the nursery fire, and with her mixed-up way of signs and making faces and drawing pictures, Lucy told me that if anyone ever, ever saw me do anything like what I did with the soldiers, they would kill me. Even Papa.
“I don’t believe you!” I yelled at her. “You are an ignorant servant!” That’s what Mama always said when one of the servants told her something she didn’t like. “Papa loves me more than anybody. He’d never hurt me.” I turned away from her so I couldn’t see her tell me anything else, but she took me by the shoulders and marched me all the way through the castle to a room near the northwest tower. It was a girl’s bedchamber. Everything was tidy and clean, but it smelled closed up, like no one had lived there for a long time. Dolls and little carved horses sat on a shelf, and books and writing things lay on a desk. On the wall was a painting of four people: a man, a woman, a boy, and a girl. I couldn’t understand why Lucy was showing me that room, until I caught sight of myself in the looking glass that hung next to the picture. The boy in the picture could have been me, and the woman in the picture looked a lot like the portrait of Grandmama that hung in the music room.
“Is that boy Papa?”
Lucy nodded, and then pointed to the little girl in the picture and to the room we were in.
“That must be Papa’s sister, Seriana, and this is her room.”
Lucy nodded again. No one ever talked about Papa’s sister. Whenever she was mentioned, people looked upset and clamped their lips tight. I’d thought she must be dead and that it made people sad to think of her. That gave me a terrible idea. “Lucy, did someone kill Seriana for making the soldiers march?” Lucy started to cry again and bobbed her head. I didn’t ask her to explain any more, and I didn’t ask her who had done the killing. I just let her hold me for a long time and told her I really didn’t mean it when I called her ignorant. She showed me that she understood.
Only after Lady Verally came to live with us when I was seven did I learn that it wasn’t Papa’s sister that had been killed, but her baby, and that Papa had done it. I learned that the things I could do were called sorcery and that sorcery was the most evil thing in the world. Seriana’s husband had been burned alive for doing it. I didn’t feel wicked when I made the soldiers march around, or when I made the cats stay out of my room when they made me sneeze, or when I made the sharp thorns fall off the draggle bushes when I went exploring in the hills, but I knew that what Lady Verally said had to be true, because Papa would never kill anyone who wasn’t wicked.
So Lucy hadn’t been exactly right in what she told me. Some things were just too hard for her to explain in her signs and pictures. Probably she thought I was too little to understand, but she got me scared, which is what she was trying to do. From that first day she watched everything I did even closer than before. She taught me to stay away from anyone who might guess that I could do such wicked things, and how I always would have to think about everything I did and everything I said so they would never know the truth about me. I certainly couldn’t stay around Papa any more. I figured that if he could see the wickedness in a little baby, then he would be able to see it in me, too. Lucy didn’t think I was wicked, but she was not near so wise as Papa.