He ground the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I tried. I’m still trying, but I am not enough.”
“Didn’t you hear Dassine? You told me he spoke only truth, and, if so, then you cannot discount the things he said of you nor the voice with which he said them. He loves you as a son and says you are worthy of our trust. Whatever he’s done to you, I cannot believe he would send you forth with no resources to fight this battle.”
“He sent me to you…” His eyes were as stark as northern winter.
“So he did.”
“… but I cannot… will not… bring you harm. Go away.” He was half pleading, half commanding.
The sunlight beckoned beyond the broken walls. I didn’t want to be here. I had not asked for this. Why had Dassine sent D’Natheil to me? Was it only that I knew the words to understand his needs? Was it only that I had knowledge to help unravel the puzzle of his destination, to find what was left of the Exiles to unlock his message, to keep him safe in my world? D’Natheil had isolated himself to protect us, and his mind had become a prison in which his tormentors could do whatever they willed with him. Indeed I should leave him. I had no weapon to repel this kind of assault.
A prison … As I watched the Prince huddle alone in his anguish, harsh truth ripped my soul like the first blast of winter. I had been here before… and I had walked away. Had Karon felt me abandon him as he shivered alone in the cold wind, awaiting the first touch of flame? Had he heard my pleading and accusations and condemnation there at the end, only pretending confused hearing? He had believed his soul was the price of our safety, and I had cursed him for not paying it. And because I could not forgive him, I had turned my back on him, refusing the only thing he had ever asked of me. Live, my dearest love. You are the essence of life. … I had walled myself up in my own prison and allowed my life to wither away.
Forgiveness cannot change what has gone before. Were Karon standing in front of me in this ruin, he would hold to his conviction that he could not use his power in corrupt ways just to save us. And I would argue until my last breath that a man of honor, a man who loved, could not allow his child and his friends to be murdered. But forgiveness is not a matter of repayment or surrender or forgetting, of winning or losing. It is a transformation of the heart. Yes, I knew of prisons and torment. That was why my feet wanted so badly to walk away… and why, in the end, I could not. Not this time.
I sat down on the rough ground in front of D’Natheil, pushing aside the broken paving stones that poked through my skirt. “Listen to me”—he had buried his head again with another shuddering breath—“and look at me. I want to tell you a story. Baglos told us of your childhood, a childhood blighted by war in a city that should have known only peace, but I’m going to tell you of a childhood of peace, among people who fought a battle that was much the same as yours. It should have been your childhood, too, if your people had not forgotten how to make it so…”
I told him Karon’s stories of growing up in Avonar with the descendants of J’Ettanne, where the children always had an uncle or an aunt to listen to their troubles, where they waited anxiously for their talents to emerge, even though use of them brought only danger and risk, where they listened wide-eyed to the magical stories of Av’Kenat and dreamed of one day sharing in such a celebration. I told him of Celine, and all I could remember of the exploits of Eduardo the Horse Tamer, and Gaillard the Builder, who stayed late every night after his workmen went home and sang to his bricks until they nestled smooth in their mortar. When his workmen would return the next morning, Gaillard would laugh merrily as the men stood and marveled at their own prowess, boasting that nowhere in the Four Realms were there such skilled bridge builders as in Avonar.
For hour after hour I forced D’Natheil to listen and to look me in the eye as I spoke. I did not stop when I heard Rowan walk across the stone paving, stand behind me for a few moments, and then leave again when it became clear there was no rescuing to be done. And I did not stop when D’Natheil cried out in anguish as the light beyond the sagging roof failed, and it looked as if everything we had gained was lost again. Instead, I touched his cold hand and felt the quivering tension as he fought to hold back the darkness… and as I held fast, the darkness enveloped me as well…
Come, Lord Prince, freedom and power await… The whispers crawled up my back and between my shoulders, twining about my neck and ears, sending threads through my hair and wrapping cold fingers about my belly… pricking my flesh and bone… pricks that became barbs that became spikes… We can give you back what you have lost… come do us homage… Streaks of red, and green, and purple… mammoth dark-clad figures, seated on huge thrones of black stone… their massive heads turning to examine my soul… I was lost if they saw me. They had no faces… only streaks of light… ruby, emerald, amethyst… glittering facets… lurid light reflecting in a sea of black glass… nauseating light in a roiling, smoke-filled blackness… a storm of choking ash… else you are left as nothing, condemned to look back at all you are… And the void gaped before me like the maw of a monster, like the sky when the last star winks out…
My head was cracking, my skin charring with a blazing heat, my stomach rebelling at the formless emptiness. “No!” I growled. Forcing my tongue to answer my command, forcing my eyes to stay open, I wrenched mind and tongue back to the stories… to life… to beauty… The darkness receded, and it was only night, reality comprised of our linked hands and my voice, telling of laughter and sadness and courage and hope, like the tale of Errail the Gardener, who made his flowers bloom only one day longer each year, until after thirty years the other gardeners of Valleor feared their plants were failing, because they bloomed a full month less than those of Avonar. And so on through the night…
About the time I thought my voice and my supply of tales must fail, D’Natheil’s hand grew warm, the suppressed trembling faded away, and his breath began to flow soft and even. Careful not to break his hold lest it wake him, I stretched my cramped legs and eased around to rest my aching back against the stone wall.
How many hours had I racked my brain for every scrap I could remember, so there would be no crack in the armor I built for him? The words could have been about things other than Avonar and the J’Ettanne, but I thought Karon’s stories might have the most meaning.
The wind whispered about the hilltop. In the distance a night bird screeched. Impossible to sleep. I remembered my father returning to Comigor after a long campaign, day after day of riding, fighting, poor food, no sleep, so tired he couldn’t even lift up my tiny mother and twirl her about as was his custom. My mother would urge him to go straight to bed and could never understand why he would sit up late in his study, drinking brandy and smoking his pipe and talking to any who would listen, saying he was too tired to sleep. Karon had been the same. Whenever he returned from one of his secret journeys, he would sit up late in the library or the garden, staring into the fire or the sky, saying he could not sleep until he had rested a while. Now I understood. I was beginning to understand so many things.
The sounds of horses and muted voices told me that Rowan had brought the others up the hill to be close. And before very long came footsteps and a quiet question. “Do you need anything?” It was Rowan.