“That’s what I thought. So answer my question. Why is it so important that you speak to the Lady?”
“Because she’s the only one as I can give the message. The young master believes the Prince won’t listen - as has been shown true - so he needs the Lady to convince the Prince to do what needs done. If she was dead, I’d be able to tell the Prince direct, but since she’s alive I can’t, and I’ll be shiv’d if I know what in blazes I’m to do now!”
I sat for a moment trying to sort out what I’d just heard and had no luck at all. So I pulled a cloth pouch from the pocket of my robes. “Would you like something to eat?”
“I’m not hungry.”
Another clue that all was not as usual with the boy. The Prince had told me a great deal about Paulo. I took a handful of dried duskberries from the pouch and munched on them while I watched the boy watching me. I felt a question forcing its way out of him.
“So” - he scraped at a wayward carrot with his fingernail, concentrating on its pale skin - “does Radele know you’re here talking to me?”
“No, he does not. You can trust me, Paulo. I promise.” Of course, I had to hope he wasn’t fool enough to believe just any Dar’Nethi’s promise. Only mine. “I need you to trust me.”
“I don’t know you.”
“True. What if I were to share a terrible secret with you?”
“Why would you do that? Don’t you believe the young master is evil like everyone else does? And if he’s evil, then I’m probably evil, too.”
“I choose to believe in you, young Paulo, because if the young Lord is corrupt and you are corrupt, then there’s no saving the Prince. He might be able to save Avonar or he might not, but he - the man you know and honor as I do - will be irretrievably lost. I’ve left to the Prince the task of saving the worlds, but in the stupidly prideful way of Dar’Nethi Preceptors, I’ve taken on myself the task of saving him.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know of his two lives, and I would guess you understand that your friend, the man you admire so deeply, is a person named Karon, a Dar’Nethi Healer snatched from death sixteen years ago.” Astonishing to think of what my audacious colleague Dassine had done, binding a dead man’s soul to a pyramid-shaped crystal the size of my hand, holding that soul prisoner for ten years, and then pouring it into the body of a dying prince.
“I know that.”
“And you know that, in some way, he is also the Prince D’Natheil, a magnificent warrior, but one who glories in violence, a man driven and controlled by his anger… ”
It is always a delight to see the dawn of understanding on a human visage. One of life’s greatest pleasures.
“You’re saying that he’s coming to be D’Natheil and not the other! He even said it - that the Prince I knew mightn’t exist any more.”
“He sees it happening, but he doesn’t know how to stop it. He’s fought it since he took up residence in Avonar, believing it was only a matter of his will to make sure D’Natheil stayed in his place. But will hasn’t been enough, for his own nature has conspired against him. Anger is the catalyst, you see, for anger was the core of D’Natheil’s life.”
Had Dassine miscalculated? Had the murdered Prince D’Natheil’s soul not completed its journey beyond the Verges before Dassine displaced it with his prisoner? We would likely never know. But the evidence was clear: More of D’Natheil remained than Dassine could ever have intended.
“When our Prince saw the results of the Zhid raids on a village, or remembered the horrors of Zhev’Na and the innocents who suffered from them, D’Natheil’s anger began to eat away at him. Slowly. So slowly he wasn’t sure of what was happening and told no one, not even his wife. But it was only after his counselor Jayereth’s murder, when he suspected his son had betrayed his trust, that he came to believe he was going to lose the battle. Before I could discover a way to help him, his trap was sprung, and our worst fears realized.”
Paulo nodded. “That’s when he come to kill the young master. I never saw him angry like that. Not in Zhev’Na when he was a slave. Not at the Gate when the Zhid made him fight.”
“Yes. And on that darkest of nights, when his beloved wife was at the point of death… Paulo, he could not heal her. He could not even begin.”
“Blazes.”
“He’s been able to work no healing since that day. The foundation of his life has been destroyed. He sees his soul as lost, and his wife lost, and his son, and he can do nothing at all about any of it.”
The Prince carried Dassine’s crystal with him everywhere now - his suspended death awaiting his touch. I feared for his life as well as his reason and his soul.
“Why are you telling me this? I’m a nobody horse trainer. You need a sorcerer to help him.”
“Because yesterday when he sat at your bedside, I saw the spark of his last hope. He desperately wants to believe you. He wants you to convince him that his son is not what he thinks. He knows that if he slays his own son, he will lose himself forever, but unless you give him a choice, he will have to do it.”
“But I’ve got no proof, only what I know to be true. And if I tell him what I know - even if I could - it would just show him where to find the young master so as to kill him. The Prince even said that’s what he intends.”
“So it appears we’re at an impasse. You need to speak to the Lady, in hopes she can sway the Prince to listen to his son. But the Lady cannot hear you, or if she hears, she can do nothing about it. The young Lord himself cannot appear before the Prince to state his arguments, because he would end up without his head. And please, explain to me once more, why is it you cannot plead his case before the Prince?”
The boy kicked at a crate of shallots. “Because the young master put an enchantment on me that I could only give the message to the Prince if the Lady was dead! We never figured on her being like this.”
“I was hoping that’s what you meant.”
The boy’s face twisted into such a perfect image of confusion that I burst into entirely inappropriate laughter, a habit I’ve never overcome since my far-distant youth.
“Tell me, good Paulo,” I said, when I had sobered enough to say it. “What do you know of this Radele?”
I had warned the Prince not to put his family at Men’Thor’s mercy, not in such a delicate matter as young Gerick. But full of self-condemnation at his indiscretion and mistrusting his own affection for the boy, he had chosen a bodyguard who would be impervious to such emotion, the son of Men’Thor and grandson of Ustele, the only Preceptorate member to suggest publicly that D’Natheil should be overthrown and another Heir named to lead Avonar to war with the Zhid. The Prince believed that Ustele’s and Men’Thor’s opposition was rooted in legitimate care for Avonar. I had no such conviction.
Paulo spoke grudgingly. “Radele is a good fighter. Helped run off the bandits from the merchant caravan we traveled with. And he’s a gentleman, I suppose. Educated. Manners and all that… ”
“But he disdains those who are not Dar’Nethi.”
“Every moment of every day he was looking down our necks, all the way down into our boots, thinking we were dirt. But what he hated most was the young master. The young master knew real quick that Radele wasn’t there to protect him. The Lady maybe, but not him. Radele was there to watch - ” The boy abruptly clamped his mouth shut and glanced up at me. “Why do you care? You’re Dar’Nethi, too.”
“Did you ever see Radele do anything but watch?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” I felt him withdrawing. “I don’t know what you want.”
“As you said, Radele is an extremely skilled warrior. He is also a Dar’Nethi of more than moderate talents, as are his father and grandfather. Let me tell you a story from the long past, before old Ustele was named Preceptor. A woman called S’Patra, a Speaker of immense talent, was a candidate for Preceptor, as was Ustele. D’Natheil’s grandfather was torn between the two. Both were renowned for skill and loyalty. Both had fought the Zhid for years on the walls of Avonar. But S’Patra and Ustele had very different ideas on whether to concentrate our efforts on strengthening the Bridge or pursuing the war. Eventually, the Heir named S’Patra to the Preceptorate.”