“Confusion, certainly.”
Pieces snapped into position. “Ah, but you see, Karon told us, too. In his vision. When he found the word of healing buried inside him, he said he felt cold. The bridge he saw was made of ice.”
“But it’s summer.” His rebuttal was more a question than a protest.
“Exactly. But if you were to travel ten hard days straight west of my cottage, where would you be? Deep in the heart of the Dorian Wall, the highest mountains in the Four Realms, mountains so high that the snow never melts.”
“The royal city, Avonar, is in the mountains, so Baglos says,” said D’Natheil softly. His hands fell still as he looked up at me. “And that’s where the Gate exists in the other world, my world. Perhaps they built both ends of the Bridge in mountains.”
“Yes. In the mountains. They would have wanted it hidden, hard to find, hard to stumble onto by accident. It would have to be safe… a special place… a fortress…” Stars in the highest heavens… the answer lay before me as clear as my name. “D’Natheil, I know where it is. Or at least where to find out. There’s a map!”
“How so?”
“The J’Ettanne built a stronghold called Vittoir Eirit at a place that was sacred to their ancestors, although they had forgotten why. One of them left a map, telling how to find it. We’ll have to decipher the map…” I was afraid to let myself feel excitement. The evidence was so flimsy, the prospects so uncertain. Tennice had never seen the map, so his memory couldn’t reproduce it. I would have to go to Montevial and gain admittance to the vaults. I could envision the exact place where the journal was hidden. No one would have disturbed it. I told D’Natheil about the journal, and the Writer, and Karon’s and my futile attempts to interpret the map. “… but with you and Baglos, it’s possible. When Tennice is well, we’ll go get it.”
On the next day Baglos called me into the sickroom. Tennice had wakened and would not quiet until he spoke with me. He was so weak that Baglos feared to deny him.
“Where is he?” Tennice’s eyes blinked wide open as soon as I kissed his hot forehead. “Where’s Karon?”
I sat on the side of his bed and stroked his thinning hair. “He’s dead, Tennice. Ten years dead. You remember.”
“He stayed with me. In my head.” His eyes burned with more than fever. The pounding of his blood was visible through his pale skin.
“You were his friend, and he loved you. And it helped him, too, to be with you.”
“Run away, Seri. Take him away from the darkness.” Tennice clutched my hand with no more strength than a child. “The shadow will destroy him… enslave us all.”
“We’ll leave here as soon as you’re better.”
“You must get him away.”
“Hush, Tennice. Karon is beyond the Verges. No one can harm him any more, and all the shadows have fled with your dreams.” I took a cup from the Dulcé‘s hand. “Here, have some soup. Baglos is a cook without peer.” After two swallows, Tennice fell asleep again.
Unsettled by Tennice’s delirium, I wandered into Professor Ferrante’s study. On the night of our return to Verdillon, Baglos and D’Natheil had come here to remove the professor’s body, only to discover that someone had already done so. Baglos claimed it was not the way of the Zhid either to hide or bury their victims, so we assumed the household staff had done it. But we had seen no further sign of Ferrante’s servants. In almost a week, neither friend nor foe had come to Verdillon. It was very strange.
The study was quiet and sunny, a lovely high-ceilinged room painted yellow and white. Leirans having no foolish notions about unquiet spirits, I was not uncomfortable in the room. Only my mind was tainted with the lingering aura of murder, not the place itself. Baglos and I had both spent a number of hours there in the past days, the insatiable Dulcé devouring the professor’s books and maps while I poked through the records of Ferrante’s teaching. On this afternoon I lost myself tracing students’ names and studies, so that it seemed only a short time until the tall clock downstairs began to strike the hour. It struck slowly, reminding me both that I ought to wind it and that I was past due to relieve Baglos. As I left the library, a sunbeam glinted off something nestled in the thick carpet. I picked it up, a brass button of the type used on military coats. Guilty at having abandoned the Dulcé, I thought little of it and dropped it in my pocket.
On the next morning, just at dawn, the mystery of Ferrante’s missing servants was solved. After turning my bedside duties over to Baglos, I went out to walk in the kitchen garden to get a breath of air. The nighttime coolness had yielded early to one of the few hot days of Vallorean summer.
My mind raced ahead of my feet that morning, as I considered the problem of getting into the storerooms of the royal antiquities collection. Habits from my years in Dunfarrie had me stopping every few steps to pull up a straggling clump of threadweed that threatened a healthy plant or to pick a precocious bean that had ripened earlier than its fellows. When I found a row of carrots whose tops bulged from the damp soil, I stooped to pull a few of them for our supper. The carrots were hidden behind a row of trellises draped with limp pea vines, and so it was through the leafy barrier that I came eye to eye with a small, smudge-faced girl. Both of us stepped backward in surprise. The child recovered quicker and streaked for the iron gate in the garden wall, but I had longer legs and grabbed the waif before she could make her escape.
“Let me go!” cried the child in Vallorean. She looked to be eight or nine years old, with stringy hair that might have been straw-colored had it been it clean. “We’ve leave to take bits from the garden. Master said. I’m not stealing.” Tears rolled out of the child’s long-lashed eyes, streaking her grimy cheeks.
“You can keep the vegetables.” The child clutched an onion and a tiny cucumber tightly in her stained apron. “Just tell me who you are. Come on, what’s your name?”
“Kat.”
“Do you live nearby? On the grounds here perhaps?”
The child clamped her mouth shut.
“I promise—I wish you no harm. Was it Professor Ferrante who gave you permission to take things from the garden?”
Kat nodded, her lips quivering. “But he’s dead now.”
“Yes… I know.” My surprise had me stumbling. “Please, Kat, can you tell me what happened here? Where are your mama and papa?”
“Mum’s dead, just like Master.” Kat nodded with a weary acceptance that had no place on the shoulders of a child. “Same ones as killed Master did it.”
“Gracious gods… did… did they kill everyone?”
“Some ran off to the woods. But Mum fell and got tramped on by the horses. She didn’t remember me before she died, nor even her name. I don’t want those men to come back.” Kat gave a big sniff and wiped her face on her sleeve, leaving the sleeve and the face equally smeared. “You’re hurting my arm.”
I loosened my grip, but did not release her. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Kat. It’s just that I’m frightened of the wicked men, too. Are you hiding with your papa, then?”
She shook her head. “With Aunt Teriza. She was Chloe’s helper in the kitchen.”
“And the bad men didn’t hurt her?”
“We was gone to market that day. As we come back through the fields, we saw everybody running and screaming. We’ve been hiding in the root cellar all these days for not knowing what else to do. Aunt Teriza’s terrible afraid.”
“Can you take me to your aunt? Or perhaps you could bring her here? You could get more vegetables, and I could talk to her.” I laid my beans and carrots in the child’s apron. “Tell her that my name is Seri and that I’m here with Master Tennice, the professor’s friend.”
“She’s out by the gate.”
“Could you bring her? Will you trust me?”
Kat nodded, and when I let her loose, she sped down the path. In only a few moments, a rumpled, grimy young woman approached timidly, holding the little girl’s shoulders protectively.