My body trembled with the thoughts that blossomed within it like bonfires at a midsummer’s fair. My mind refused to give credence to the absurd speculation taking shape from its confusion. Impossible. Inconceivable. Lunacy.
A heavy hand fell on my shoulder. “Are you mad?” Kellea whispered fiercely in my ear. “You’re a fool. Any one of these bastards could see you standing here. Let’s go some place safer, if you don’t mind.”
I let Kellea lead me. I couldn’t have said where we were.
“Did the soldiers come back before you got him loose? Is he still prisoner?” Kellea asked, when we reached the second-level gallery.
“No, it worked wonderfully well.” I could not focus on Kellea’s words for the chaos inside me and the fire that lingered on my hand.
“Where is he then?”
“The Gate. He went to the Gate to wait for them…” I crushed her hands in mine, knowing what I had to do. “Kellea, you’ve got to put me back.” Now I dragged her down the stairs.
We reached the next turn of the stair, and she balked. “What are you saying?”
“They’ve not discovered I’m gone. The ropes are still there. Put me back.”
I tugged at her again, but she held her ground. “In the name of reason, why?”
“Because I have to know. I can’t explain. I must be at the Gate in the morning, and there’s nowhere to hide in the chamber. So, Giano wants an audience for his triumph. He’ll take me. Please, Kellea. Put me back.”
“You’re mad.”
I yanked free of her and glided downward on airborne feet. Kellea followed me around the dark perimeter of the cavern until we reached the column where I had been held prisoner. A few moments fumbling and I found the lengths of rope. I pressed the bindings into Kellea’s hands.
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely sure. Perhaps this will keep you three safe, too. If you stay hidden until we win or lose, they won’t suspect you’re here. Do it quickly. Please.”
I stretched my arms around the column, paying no attention to the ache of my shoulders or the pull of the bindings or the scratch of the ropes about my abraded wrists. Oh, holy, blessed gods…
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” whispered Kellea as she tied the last knot.
“Be safe, Kellea.”
The Dar’Nethi girl laid a hand on my shoulder, and then slipped silently into the darkness.
In the next hours, I relived every moment that had passed since Midsummer’s Day. When had I first felt it?
At Ferrante’s when he came out of the shadows to check that all was well with me? I had caught the scent of roses and thought I was dreaming. In the forest out of Fensbridge, when his laughter set my blood afire? I had called myself a lustful fool. As far back as the day he threw the knife at the rock and I felt the touch of enchantment? Tennice had seen it in his illness, and I had called it delirium. Stars of heaven, he had even named the great chestnut Sunlight. The Vallorean word for sunlight was karylis, and only one horse in my memory shared the name of the Vallorean mountain that sheltered the lost city of Avonar.
No wonder the stories I’d told him in the ruined castle seemed more like his own memories than any Baglos had provided. I could not shake the implausible, impossible, lunatic conviction that they were his own memories. In some way beyond all rational understanding, the man who had appeared out of nowhere on Poacher’s Ridge, the man who sat upstairs in the chamber of fire, setting himself ready to prevent the doom of the world, was Karon.
CHAPTER 35
Dawn crept over the lake outside the cavern. Muddled with unchecked speculations, incoherent plotting, and unsettling half-dreams of disembodied faces, I scrabbled my way out of the long night. I had not wanted to sleep. I had wanted to do nothing but ponder on how it was possible that Karon could live. Only a madwoman could even consider it.
Baglos still lay under the colonnade like a discarded boot. As I shifted my cramped shoulders and stiff neck, I wondered if the Duke had known anything of what had been done to D’Natheil. D’Natheil… If this inconceivable fantasy were true, then what had become of the true prince? The man who had come to me in the woods on Poacher’s Ridge did not know himself. His body and spirit were alien to each other. I had seen that from the first, but hadn’t understood it. How did a soul exist in a body that was not its own? A constant struggle of emotion and instinct, untempered by experience or memory. Even his appearance had been in flux. Was that, too, the result of this inner combat? Dassine said that D’Natheil’s clouded mind was the inevitable result of what he had done to the Prince. What had he done? What I wouldn’t give for a few moments’ conversation with Dassine!
With the daylight came doubts about all that had been so convincing in the darkness. And even if my mad beliefs were true, his circumstances were so desperate that I might not see him again. Yet somehow my spirits were no longer bound by rational thinking or the limits of possibility.
As the pearly preamble to the day gave way to bold pinks and reds, Maceron’s men stirred and began the usual rituals of morning: rummaging in packs for food, relieving themselves under the colonnade, saddling horses, grumbling, bawling orders, curses, and insults. An hour passed and Giano did not come. Had he already found the Prince by the Gate? I craned my neck in a futile attempt to see. Where were they?
Maceron strolled across the mud-tracked paving. He gnawed on a leathery piece of jack, wiping the grease from his unshaven face with the back of one hand. “So you’re still here,” he said, grinning.
“And where else would I be?” I snapped, finding it easy to reclaim a combative spirit on this singular morning. “Why would I wish to be anywhere but here with my arms bent so charmingly about this stone tree? Have the villains finished their murderous doings?” I didn’t have to force the tremor into my speech.
He tweaked the rope binding my hands. “It seems our prisoner has escaped his guards.”
“Escaped?”
“You needn’t get your hopes up. He’ll not evade the priest. Can’t say I’d be sorry to see this Giano humbled. Though if I thought the devil sorcerer had the least chance to escape, I’d hunt him down myself and to perdition with all business arrangements. But the priest hates him more than I do.” He drew his knife and twirled it through his fingers as soldiers will do to amaze small boys.
I shrank back against the pillar, away from the flashing edge. “You claim to hate sorcerers, and then you help them with their murders. It makes no sense.”
Maceron shrugged. “The priests say our world will be free of sorcerers when they’re done. My master believes them, and who am I to question?” He sliced through my bonds, yanked me to my feet, and propelled me through the cavern, relinquishing custody to the gray-hooded Zhid waiting at the foot of the stairway. “Don’t think I’ll lose track of you, madam,” he called, as the hooded Zhid herded me up the steps. “You will reap your proper reward!”
On another day, I would have devised a proper retort for the vile sheriff, but my mind was far ahead of my feet, reaching into the chamber of blue fire. Is it you? Tell me. Give me a sign.
Giano awaited us at the first landing. His usually colorless face was flushed and his empty eyes gleamed hungrily in the torchlight. “I almost came to visit you last night,” he said, smiling. “But I wonder if I would have found you where I left you?”
“I am very proficient at releasing myself from captivity and reattaching myself to stone pillars,” I said. “It’s always such a lark.”
“Mmm… I wonder.” The Zhid wagged a dark-stained fragment of silver cord. “This doesn’t look like sorcery to me, and I don’t think the Dulcé has waked from his slumbers to perform yet another service for his prince.”