Vroon had actually said that by the time she finished yelling at them, they were all but certain she couldn’t be the Bounded King, but were afraid of what she might do to them if they let her go. That detail seemed best left for later.
“This isn’t exactly the kingdom I have in mind. So I suppose that when they talked about ‘the one’ - that was you?”
“I didn’t - They shouldn’t have taken you.” I wasn’t going to apologize for something I’d had nothing to do with. Certainly not to her.
“I’m the Crown Princess of Leire. I survived it.”
We had come to the steps of the Blue Tower again. After “thinking ourselves in” and summoning the waiting Singlar women to join us, I bowed. “I’ve told the servants to give you whatever you need.”
To my astonishment, she curtseyed in return. “Tell me, do you dine alone in your royal dining room, Your Majesty, or may a former playmate join you?”
I almost choked. I’d sooner dine in the middle of a nettle patch. “I eat with Paulo,” I said. “He’s not used to being laid up and needs me to talk to him. There’s not much room - ”
She raised her eyebrows, turned her back, and walked away, her soggy, overlarge robe sweeping behind her like coronation-day regalia. I felt like a glob of mud on the floor.
After three days, Nithea declared Paulo ready to eat real food. On the fifth day, I took him walking a few steps through the halls. A week and his ribs no longer pained him so badly, though Nithea kept them bound up tight. His hands remained heavily bandaged. Nithea had begun to “work the bones” now the festering was gone. Paulo didn’t want me with them when she did this, saying only that he’d be grateful if I could find some herb that deadened feeling… maybe from the neck down… while she worked her magic.
“What she does isn’t magic,” I told him. “It’s just the way of things here.” I explained it all again as I had to Roxanne.
“And the princess… ”
“She’s civil. Zanore takes her walking every morning, and Vroon says she’s trying to teach the servants how to sew and how to serve food properly and make her bed. She’s not hit anyone or taken an ax to them.”
“That’s a surprise. She seems such a… ”
“… wretched brat?”
“Yeah, that.”
“She is. Whenever I see her, she takes me to task about the food, the clothes, the temperature, no windows, her bodyguards, no sunlight… everything. I think it’s just she doesn’t know how not to complain. I stay as far away from her as I can.”
“She is fine-looking, though, even when I saw her. Strange to think you might have been married to her by now.” Paulo seemed to enjoy the thought.
I just found it alarming. “So, I guess some good came out of my being stolen away.”
He raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “Someday you’ll get all this sorcery and doom and king business out of your head and figure out there’s other things for a man to think about.”
On the day Paulo felt strong enough to climb the stairs to the portal, we set out for my long-delayed visit to the Source. Only an hour or so remained until time for the lights to go down. I had sat all day in the audience hall, hearing the petitions of a far-flung group of Singlars who wanted to dig a trench to draw water to their tappa fields from another tower cluster’s supply.
“Are you sure you feel up to this?”
Paulo pushed my hand away. “If you don’t get to it, you’re going to forget what you come here for. I don’t want you getting to like this king business too much. I’d give a deal to see the sun sometime soon.”
We made the stomach-jolting passage to the garden that was still blooming as if this particular spot were forever spring. The yellow daylight was hot as we clambered down the steps. Paulo stopped just inside the cave mouth, close enough to listen.
“I’m depending on you,” I said. I hadn’t thought this venture would make me feel so unsettled, wound up tight with my stomach gnawing on itself.
“I’ll be here.”
Torches still burned in the sconces on the walls, making the cave sparkle, just as on our first visit. I walked the short distance to the spring. The basin itself was nothing remarkable, a slight depression in shallow shelf of rock that protruded from the mossy niche. The blue-green water seeped out of the surrounding rock to fill the basin and looked to be far deeper than the shallow bowl could possibly permit. I couldn’t resist the urge to dip my hand into it.
“So you’ve come at last.” No sooner had I touched the water than the clear voice surrounded me, reverberating in my very bones as if the icy water had penetrated my skin and carried the sound directly into me.
“You know who I am?” I said, peering under and around and behind the basin, examining the niche and the surrounding crystals as closely as possible. Finding nothing. I could see no hiding place in the alcove at the end of the cave, no sign of where the speaker might be found.
“You are the One Who Makes Us Bounded, our long-awaited king. You have lived in two worlds and found your place in neither, but in this world will you find the healing you seek.” I still couldn’t tell if the speaker was a man or a woman, but the smooth texture of the voice made me think of it as a “she.”
“I’m not looking for healing, only answers.”
“Only a small part of your questioning can I satisfy. All answers can be found within yourself.”
“Who and what are you?”
“I am the Source - the first root of this world, not yet buried deep by the weight of years.”
“Why are you so sure that I’m this king? How did you get into my dreams? How did you learn of me?”
She laughed softly. “So many questions… Here is one answer to satisfy all. As a stone falls to the land of which it is a part, as the rain finds its way to the sea which is its essence, so have you found your way to the Bounded. The stone dreams of the earth. The raindrop dreams of the ocean. And the earth needs no one to tell it of the stone’s existence.”
Vagaries and poetic speech - just as I had always read about oracles and prophecies. No absolutes. No matter what happened, a believer could always claim the sayings were truth, and a skeptic call them nonsense. I rested my back on the cave wall and thought about questions. Paulo’s presence hovered behind me, so the next would be for his satisfaction as well as my own need.
“Are you… is any of this the work of the Lords of Zhev’Na?”
“The Bounded is beyond the reach of the Lords as long as you are beyond the reach of the Lords.”
I couldn’t decide whether or not that was reassuring. “Then who was the Guardian? The only reason I’m going along with this king business is to undo the things he’s done.”
“The Guardian it was who first spoke to me. His intent seemed earnest, his hand firm and enduring to guide the Singlars as they emerged from chaos.” For the first time the voice reflected surprise… puzzlement. “Has he failed you, lord king?”
“He bound the Singlars to their towers with threats and punishments, beating and killing them, forbidding them company and pleasure, even denying them comfort and healing for their wounds and diseases. The Guardian said it was your commands he undertook. Why do you control the Singlars so cruelly, starving and punishing them?”
“No, no, my being is not cruelty. I entrusted the Guardian with the search for the king, but his reports never showed these things that trouble you. I shall have to consider the Guardian and hear your tales of the Singlars.” Legitimate concern. Legitimate sadness. “Sadly, intents are often flawed… misdirected. Sometimes we fail to pay attention to things we ought. You know this.”