“He made his choice,” I said. “He did exactly what he wanted - set you free. And Avonar. And all of us.”
“He was free, too,” said Gerick. “By the end, there was no more D’Natheil.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“But I wanted him to live.”
We sat together at Karon’s side. I was too wrung out to say much of anything. Yet the passions of a sixteen-year-old are not easily dulled. Gerick kept his hand on Karon’s unmoving chest. “He’s close, Mother. He wants so much to be here with us.”
It must have been near midnight when we finally persuaded Gerick, half sick with exhaustion, to go back to my apartments with Paulo to eat and sleep for a while. I promised that Karon would not be left alone and that one of us would continue talking to him. Paulo laid Ven’Dar’s hooded cloak over Gerick’s shoulders to protect my son from curious eyes. Gerick was still condemned and feared, and it would take a while for the Dar’Nethi - and all of us - to understand what had really taken place that day.
As soon as the boys had gone, Ven’Dar summoned Bareil to prepare Karon’s body for his funeral rites. “The people will need to see him laid out. You understand. So they can believe and accept.”
“Of course I understand.”
“You should go with your sons, lady. I’ll wait here, keep our promise to Gerick, until Bareil arrives to take care of the Prince. You’ve had a day such as no one should ever have, and tomorrow will have its own burdens. We have a number of decisions to make, and perhaps some journeying to do.”
“And what of you, Ven’Dar? Tomorrow you will be anointed Heir of D’Arnath, and face the task of rebuilding a world. Perhaps you’re the one who needs to take a few hours of sleep.”
“Another hour of peace here would probably benefit me more. I have a great deal to consider.” He looked at me quizzically. “Will your son have regrets, do you think, when he looks back to know he might have been the Heir of D’Arnath?”
“No. I don’t think he’d ever feel like he belonged here. Karon knew exactly what he was doing, and Gerick has so much as told you the same. Even if he still had any legitimate claim, he wouldn’t press it. You are the only living Heir.”
“And if so, I certainly need to meditate for a little longer. I’ve summoned a guide who awaits you in the first guardroom. Good night, dear lady. I promise you, the Prince will not be left alone tonight.” He smiled and touched my hand. “I’ve a few things more I need to tell him.”
And so I left him in the prison block and found Aimee waiting in the guardroom to guide me back to my apartments. Gerick and Paulo were sprawled out on the carpets when I arrived, and Roxanne curled up on the couch, all of them sound asleep. I smiled through my tears at the sweetness of life and youth, and fell into my own bed. Karon’s rose still bloomed beside me.
Neither dreams nor true sleep came to me that night. Rather I drifted in some half waking, at peace save for the ponderous grief that wrapped heart and body in a blanket of lead. My long farewell continued through the dark, quiet hours.
But for one more night, my rest was destined for interruption. “Madam, please… wake up. My lady, come quickly.” Two almond-shaped eyes shone in the gray light. It was Bareil.
“What is it?” I whispered, instantly afraid for Gerick, for Roxanne, for Paulo. The Lords were back. The world ending…
But he just shook his head and urged me up.
I threw on a gown over my shift. Avonar, exhausted with its emotions, lay quiet in the faint light outside my window. Even the birds were hushed as if in respect for the weary populace. Paulo and Roxanne still lay wrapped in their dreams and Aimee’s blankets, and Aimee herself dozed in the chair by the door, waiting until her charges might awake. Morning lay over them like a soft gray mantle. But Gerick wasn’t with them.
Once Bareil and I were in the passage, I tried again. “What is it?” But he only shook his head and hurried me through the wide galleries and down a graceful curved staircase, through the formal public rooms of the palace. “Where’s Gerick?”
Two huge doors of carved walnut swung open at our approach, and we entered a long room with high arched ceilings. The dawn light tinged with rose angled sharply through the tall windows, making an enchanted mist of the dust motes floating in the air. Halfway down the length of the vast, empty room sat a simple bier of polished walnut, surrounded by hundreds of candles in crystal bowls. That’s where they would lay him.
Bareil didn’t pause by the empty bier, but led me to a side door, a very plain door. “This is the preparation room, my lady.”
Where they took their dead princes to enchant their wounds away, I thought, to bathe them and array them in whatever attire was deemed suitable for burial - to hide the terrible truths of death. Oh, gods, why had he brought me here?
The room was small and businesslike, with a marble table at its center, clearly the resting place for the honored dead, though it, too, remained vacant. Waiting. At one side of the room was a rack with silk robes of various colors, and on the other, rows of glass shelves containing vials of oils and perfumes, boxes of candles, scrolls, small velvet-lined boxes of leather and wood that contained jewelry and gemstones. Across the room were several cushioned mourners’ benches, flanking an open doorway. The room had no windows, but opened onto a small garden, a gentle reminder of life in a room devoted to the service of death. A very Dar’Nethi arrangement.
Gerick sat on the mourner’s bench, his head resting in his hands.
I crossed the room and laid a hand on his hair. “Are you all right, dear one?”
“I couldn’t sleep,” he said, without looking up. “I’ll be all right.”
Ven’Dar appeared in the arched doorway from the garden. “Good morning, my lady,” he said, somberly. “My apologies for waking you so early, but a matter of some urgency has arisen with regard to the Prince’s funeral rites. Your son and I believe that only you can resolve it.”
“But I know very little of your customs… ” I began.
“The one who is concerned will explain the difficulty. It is very complicated, but I believe your knowledge will be sufficient. If you would step into the garden… ”
Exasperated with the Dar’Nethi and their incessant ritual, I hurried through the door into the garden. In a corner that the early sun had not yet touched, someone in silk robes of dark blue was bending over a bed of miniature roses.
“Excuse me, sir,” I said. “I understand you’ve discovered a problem with the Prince’s funeral arrangements. Please explain what is so urgent that it must be settled before the birds leave their nests. Funeral rites rarely require such haste.”
The man’s back was toward me, and the sun was in my eyes, and even when he straightened up, I thought, for a long moment, that he wasn’t going to say anything. The dawn breeze wafted a hundred scents about my head until I felt almost giddy. Was that what made the hairs on my arms prickle - or was it the breadth of his shoulders or the color of his hair bound with a clip that glinted silver in the sunbeams…
“The problem, my lady, is with the subject of these rites. He just doesn’t seem to be dead.”
And so in the gentle dawn did my love turn and greet me in such fashion as to leave no mistake as to his condition of life or death. In his unshadowed blue eyes was reflected the soul of my Karon, and in his smile was all the joy of the universe.
EPILOGUE
I had given up too soon in my waiting, back in the prison block at the palace. Karon had so much farther to come back than Gerick, and it was so much more difficult, for he believed himself properly dead. Yet Gerick’s plea had held him at the Verges, and he could not dismiss our son’s belief that only one life need be forfeit - that of the incapable D’Natheil.