I could not even begin. They confined me to my room with no paper, no pen, no book, no possible way to send a message. The serving sister who brought my meals and washing water was mute, and the guard who accompanied her forbade me to utter a sound in her presence, his drawn sword indicating that the woman’s life would be the price of my disobedience. The guards might have been deaf for all the notice they took of my pleas for justice or my promises of gold. I was allowed no implement that could conceivably be turned into a weapon. The serving woman was required to comb my hair, and the lamp was taken away whenever I was left alone, so that I spent every hour of the long winter nights in darkness. I was permitted no visitor save priests and royal inquisitors, and they always came in pairs lest I somehow corrupt them.
The priests treated me as an innocent, possessed of evil spirits raised by sorcerers. They deafened me with prayers and exhortation, lectures and sermons, encouraging me to repudiate the sorcerer. Arot, the First God, had laid down the law of the world: His sons Annadis and Jerrat were to hold dominion, and they reserved the powers of earth and sea, sky and storm to themselves. Sorcerers tried to steal that power for their own… the ultimate blasphemy.
The inquisitors treated me as if I were myself a sorceress. They threatened me with imprisonment and torture, demanding that I confess my depravity and that of the Earl of Gault and his friends.
Tomas never came to me. Not once. Nor did any other friend or acquaintance. I kept thinking that surely someone would question where Karon and I had been taken. But then I would remember the faces in Sir Geoffrey’s hall when Darzid exposed Karon’s arm… and a cold weight would settle heavier in my belly where I should have been feeling only the warmth of our growing child. Who would have courage enough to defend us?
Through all the days and nights of that winter, I felt Karon with me. Some days he could converse with me in our strange way. Some days he could only listen, and I suspected that his captors were interrogating him… torturing him. I would force such dreadful speculation out of my mind and talk to him about whatever I could think of: art or music, or philosophical speculation, or the Writer and his coded map that we had never managed to unravel, or my plans to study at the University someday when Connor did not need so much of my time.
That will be the worst, Karon said, in a rare moment of sadness. Never to see him.
I did not take the foolish course of saying that, of course, he would see our son. Neither of us was stupid. We had been imprisoned for over a month, and I had accomplished not one step to help him. I kept a barrier in my mind as Karon had taught me to do, a private place where I would not allow him to go, and there I kept my fear and grief and my guilty hopes that Karon would abandon his convictions and save himself. “There’s still the trial,” I said. “When they transport you to the King’s Bench, there might be some opportunity… a distraction… and you could change yourself and walk away.”
Ah, Seri, if willing could make it so …
He could not break chains with his magic. He could not unlock the doors of his prison. I knew that. The only way for him to be free was to invade a mind… to force his will upon another with torment and fear… to take a weapon and slay those who would harm him. Exactly the things he could never do.
“And the trial itself. Several of the lords on the Council are intelligent, thoughtful men…”
Yes. Well. Don’t get up any wild hopes about the Council.
“Wild hopes are no more unreasonable than wild hopelessness,” I argued. “I can cite many historical references to prove that wild hopes are the only way anything useful ever gets accomplished.”
I should have learned long ago never to make any absolute statement to a woman with flame in her hair.
How strange it was to carry on these dialogues without seeing each other. Though I spoke aloud to help me focus my thoughts—whispering, so that the guards outside my door could not hear—we could have continued without a single audible word. Eventually we found it possible to share jests, as well as our deepest thoughts about life and death. I came to hate sleep. Such a waste of time. Karon rarely slept. He said his captors hadn’t made it easy for him, and that he rested better when he was with me. He told me he could listen to my dreams.
“I wondered why mine have seemed benign, considering our circumstances,” I said.
I can’t change dreams, only drown them with other visions if I worked hard enough at it. I would never do that, though. There are those who say that dreams are how our minds work out their difficulties. There’s so much I’d like to learn about the mind. Our knowledge is so limited. Perhaps the J’Ettanne could have done better had we understood more about such things.
We talked for a long time that night about the nature of dreams.
The trial would not begin for weeks yet, but as the tally of the new year began to run, I could feel Karon getting weaker. When anyone came to question me, I would ask how my husband was being treated. “He is a son-in-law of one of the oldest families in Leire. The law forbids starvation or maltreatment of any person who has not been convicted of a crime. I can cite the reference in the Westover Codex.”
No one listened to me. Once Karon mentioned that it appeared my good offices had gotten him an extra ration of water. Have you gained a sympathizer as I deeply hope, or have you just bullied someone so long they’ll do anything to quiet you?
“Hold on,” I said. “I’ll find a way.”
But nothing changed. I might as well have been spitting on the palace towers, hoping to wear away the stone.
Year 4 in the reign of King Evard —winter
A week before the trial was to begin, Karon came to me in the middle of the night. I’m sorry to wake you, but I needed to talk.
“I’d much rather be with you,” I said, sitting up on my bed and quieting my jangled thoughts so I could communicate clearly as I spoke.
I think they’ve decided I’ve told them all that I will, so I’ve had little to do but think.
“And what have you been thinking while I so lazily slumbered?”
Why I’m here.
“I don’t understand.”
If I’m really the last, then it’s a matter of some import when I die —beyond the small matter of a J’Ettanni healer of two and thirty years that no one but you will miss. No, I’m not teasing for you to tell me who’ll miss me, though it is a comfort. But it would seem that if I’m the last, and nature has consented to it, then, in some way, something will have been completed. I’d give much to know what it is.
“And has some insight come to you through all this thinking?”
Perhaps I’m losing my reason. I can’t tell anymore. That’s why I had to talk to you now. I’ve spent these days and weeks doing my best to deny that my body exists, and as I close off the outside world, I’ve found out how large and mysterious is the inner one. Alone in this darkness and feeling this way, I found something. It must have been buried in me long ago… or maybe it’s not in me, but in that part of me that is my father or my mother or my grandfather…