I was at a loss already, grasping at bits that were comprehensible, even if they made no sense. “A thousand years! What family can be traced back a thousand years? Not even the Kerotean priest-kings claim such lineage.”
“Yes. His family is very old, but he is the last. All the others of his line are dead. That has been our great dilemma. When the Gates were opened against all expectation, D’Natheil had only just come of age and been anointed. There was a great dispute among the Preceptors that day—the Preceptors are our wisest and most powerful leaders, who advise the Heir in all matters of power and talent—matters of sorcery, as you would say. Some thought to send D’Natheil immediately to walk the Bridge for fear we would lose the chance to repair and strengthen it, but Master Dassine argued that the boy was untrained and, at only twelve years, too young to survive the attempt. The other Preceptors overruled Dassine, and D’Natheil and Baltar were led to the Gate, but when they attempted the passage, D’Natheil was thrown from it with terrible injury, and Baltar, my cousin, lay dead.
“In the chaos that resulted, Master Dassine cried out that those who were not traitors deserved defeat for their stupidity—a charge not fairly given, and he had no call to chastise the other Preceptors. But Dassine picked up the young prince in his arms, took him to his own house, and posted wards that would allow no one near D’Natheil without his leave for all these years. Though many disagreed with Master Dassine’s course of action, all could see that the premature attempt had harmed the boy in ways they could not understand. The hope has been that as D’Natheil grew older, he would learn the things needed to accomplish his purpose and develop the talents with which he was born.”
“Talents for sorcery?” I said, fighting to untangle the knot he was making of my head.
“He is not a bootmaker, woman. He is the Heir of D’Arnath.” Baglos’s indignation was worthy of a jilted bride.
I sighed. “Go on.”
“So we in Avonar have fought to retake D’Arnath’s sword from the Zhid and to defend the Bridge and the Gates until D’Natheil could reach maturity. But we have seen no further sign from the Exiles, and the Zhid have grown more powerful. Eight days ago even Master Dassine agreed the Bridge was in imminent peril. D’Natheil himself fought on the walls of Avonar that night—for the first time since his injury as a boy—and he slew fifty Zhid. We heard the terrible rumor that he lay near death after it, but clearly that wasn’t true. On the next morning Master Dassine announced that D’Natheil and his Guide must make the crossing before the Gates could be closed again.
“The rites were rushed and confused, for there was fighting in the city streets. Bendal was wounded”—Baglos’ narration faltered briefly—“and Master Exeget performed the madris so that I might serve the Prince as his Guide. But at last D’Natheil reached the palace and stepped through the Gate. The Zhid must have broken into the chamber just as Master Exeget pushed me after the Prince, for three of them followed right on my heels.”
Baglos took a deep breath, as if only now recovering from the terror of battle, and when he continued, he spoke with resolve and conviction. “The Zhid and their masters, the three Lords of Zhev’Na, will do anything to destroy the Bridge. Anything. They believe it will give them their victory, that it will complete the Catastrophe of their making. As the Heir, D’Natheil is sworn to defend the Bridge… to preserve our land… and so he must do. Now do you understand? Our people stand at the verge of annihilation, and he it is who must save us all.”
As Baglos repeated this last for Aeren, my mind was flooded with questions. And caught up in the words like flotsam on the tide were words and images that tweaked my memory, but would not explain themselves: the Breach, the world Bridge… I had tried so hard to erase the past, to get on with my useless life, forbidding the horror of my dreams from lingering into day. But one of Baglos’s bits and pieces had washed up on the shore and lay in plain view where I could not ignore it.
“Your land,” I said. “You call it Avonar?”
“Our land was once called Gondai and encompassed many realms, but now that only our royal city and the Vales of Eidolon are left outside the Wastes, that name gets little use. Avonar—the City of Light. I fear that I may never again gaze upon its beauties.”
My throat could hardly give voice to my question. My skin felt tremulous, cold and hot and numb all together, as if I’d had too little sleep. “Where is this Avonar, where such things as sorcery are the custom?”
“I cannot tell you where, except that it is in the mountains beyond the Wastes,” Baglos said. “At some other time perhaps or if D’Natheil could command me to do so, I could tell you of it.”
“There was a city in Valleor called Avonar, but it was destroyed almost twenty years ago.” The hair on my arms was standing on end. “Tell me, Baglos, who are these Exiles of whom you speak?”
“The Exiles were dispatched right after the creation of the Bridge, long before the Battle of Ghezir. Twenty Dar’Nethi were led across the Bridge by D’Arnath’s beloved brother. It is part of the story of the Bridge that I cannot remember today. To be sent so far from their home and abandoned with no hope of return seems a cruel punishment, but they are great heroes and not criminals. We never knew their fate, but our hopes that they would be able to open the Gates had long faded. When at last they accomplished it, our hearts were lifted.”
How impossible it was that I should be sitting in this meadow and talking with this odd stranger about such things, that of all the places in the Four Realms it should be Poacher’s Ridge where D’Natheil would appear out of nowhere. For who else but I, out of so many thousands, would be able to see the connections I saw amidst the incomprehensible strands of Baglos’s story? Even the symbol on the knife—at last that connection had resolved. Change the rampant lions to smooth curves, reduce the design to its elemental forms as a thousand years and imperfect memory are wont to do, and one could see the simple rectangle with the arced triangle inscribed, and the three stylized flowerets. The mark of a ruling family… just as it had been the mark of Karon’s father, the Lord of Avonar. How could this be?
“Do you know, Baglos, what was the name of the one who led your Exiles, the first one those hundreds of years ago?” I could not have said whether it was day or night, so intent was I on his answer. I would not have noticed a whirlwind had it settled in our midst or a storm of fire raging in the trees. The storm was within me.
“Everyone knows that. He holds honor next to D’Arnath himself. J’Ettanne was his name.”
The universe shifted underneath my feet. This was not coincidence. It couldn’t be. “Your people are called Dar’Nethi, then?”
“In our land we are of two peoples, Dar’Nethi and Dulcé. You can see clearly that my parentage differs from that of D’Natheil, for I am of the Dulcé. Dar’Nethi and Dulcé have lived in harmony since the beginning of time, for our gifts are very different.”
D’Natheil sat in the golden light of afternoon with his chin on his knees, his face expressionless. How much he understood, or whether any of the strange story had touched a familiar chord, it was impossible to tell.
My own difficulty was where to begin my questioning. Bridges seemed clear. Breaches—chasms—made sense. What were these gates of which Baglos spoke?
The Gates marked the two ends of D’Arnath’s Bridge, so Baglos told me as the sun settled westerly—the Heir’s Gate in Avonar, the Exiles’ Gate in this land. Found deep in a chamber accessible only to the Heir or those to whom he has given the magical key to unlock its wards, the Gates appear as a wall of fire through which one must pass to walk upon the Bridge. Baglos had been prepared for a journey of horror at the crossing, but in truth he must have fainted, for a great fracturing burst upon him just as he stepped through the wall of fire. The only remaining entry to the Heir’s Gate was located in the royal palace in Avonar, and that was where he and D’Natheil had begun their crossing. Baglos had no idea at all where any entries to the Exiles’ Gate could be found. “Not today at least,” he said. D’Natheil should have emerged at the principal entry to the Exiles’ Gate; such had been the expectation. And he, Baglos, should have been with the Prince, but this “fracturing” had separated them. He had awakened in the middle of a wheat field with a pounding head and had begun to search the countryside for D’Natheil. For three days he walked in circles, but he couldn’t find the Prince. Thus he had begun visiting towns and villages, used his silver to buy a horse, and revealed himself to strangers so as to inquire after his missing lord.