Ven’Dar nodded without expression. “Be of good heart, my lord. We are almost at an end.”
The thought of swallowing the ghastly muck turned my growling stomach. “I was of good heart until we came here.”
With the largest breath I could muster, and the vague hope that my encounter with the Pool of Memory would be exceptionally brief, I stepped from the edge and dropped into the vile mess.
I could bear the heat - vicious, but not quite so fierce as the Pool of Cleansing - but whatever substance gave the water its putrid color and villainous smell caused it to eat its way into the skin. Stinging, abrading like acid in a wound. How could I possibly let it inside me? My count reached eighty, and I had yet to open my eyes.
It was time to end this exercise. Surely I’d gained whatever benefit Ven’Dar required of me. I’d not felt so near myself in at least a year. But I couldn’t remember why… which must be why the Pool of Memory followed the Pool of Refreshment. First reawaken life and sensation, then reimpose the patterns of history. I knew who I was… but why was I here?
So instead of following my instinct and my most profound desire to climb upward and out of the pool, curiosity held me to the count of one hundred. I released my breath and let the foul mess flow into me…
The yellow sludge ate its way through me, inside, outside, body and spirit, reawakening the tale of my life - my lives - twenty-two years as D’Natheil, forty-two as Karon, ten of those dead, a disembodied soul in Dassine’s captivity, and almost six as this strange joining of Prince and Healer. In a moment’s passing all these times were made clear to me, etched into my renewed soul, all the deeds I had done - good and evil together - the words I’d spoken, the faces I’d known, even my own death and rebirth, all laid out in unfiltered clarity. Orderly. Unaltered.
Instinctively I curled into a ball, floating there in the vile yellow stink, as if I were trying to contain it all or prevent its escape… or perhaps protect myself from the intensity of feeling that must surely accompany such a panorama. But, for the moment, only the facts as they had happened floated there with me. In the hot, murky silence, I existed with my past until I uncurled and floated free.
Enough. I was becoming increasingly nauseated in this pool. I reached for the surface, but could not find it.
Relax… drift… make sure which way is up. Now, reach again. Still nothing. My heart beat faster. Easy, easy. Ven’Dar is watching. You are not abandoned here to drown in the past.
There was a pulse to the Pool of Memory, a throbbing life somewhere in its depths, faint when first I entered the pool, but growing in strength as I reached and strained to find my way out. The pulse drew me in a direction that every instinct screamed was wrong. Deeper. Panicked, I thrashed and struggled against the pull, opening my eyes to a dark blotch on a scaly yellow shelf of rock. Though my body cried out for air, I forced myself to keep drawing in the foul liquid. The blotch grew larger - a swirling vortex with a bottomless black center. I could not hold back, and inexorably the sluggish whirlpool swept me into its dark nexus, my head and feet in a tangle.
Some dense, fibrous, elastic material settled about my flailing limbs, squeezing tighter and tighter, until even the turgid yellow of the pool was lost in darkness. The pulsing continued, squeezing the yellow stuff from my body, but leaving me nothing at all to breathe.
In a single, stifling, choking instant of blind terror and despair, I was shot into a pool of cold, sparkling crystal. With my first desperate gulp of the waters of Rebirth came the emotions I had feared - a vast universe of feeling. Love, loneliness, grief, joy - so much joy I had known - all my anger, too, and hatred, and terror, but in proper balance and proportion. In the span of an hour I drowned in the feelings of two lifetimes, feeling them settle into their rightful positions like sand into the crevices of a stone path.
It is the gift of the Dar’Nethi to take in what is dealt by life and see it in its proper perspective against the glorious backdrop of the universe, accepting and savoring the good and bad alike. To view life without blinders can be difficult and fraught with pain, for you are left with no possibility of self-deception, but from the seeing conies our power.
Face down I rode the cool, gentle swells of the pool like flotsam in the tide, letting them carry me at will, forward and back, having no strength left to do otherwise, and no desire. After a while my toe scraped on a rock. I shifted slightly. My feet dragged the rocky bottom, and soon my knees, too. Only then did I crawl, exhausted, onto the pebbled shore.
I remained on all fours, coughing up the water, my arms scarcely able to hold me up, the chill of the cave quickly settling over me and into me. As before, the white robe was laid gently over my shoulders, and a hand reached out to help me to my feet. But the hand was not Ven’Dar’s. It was slender and pale, with long, graceful fingers that looked strong and capable.
I touched the hand, ensuring it was real before I dared look further, but no watery fantasy could be so much of sweet flesh and blood. And so did I look up into the luminous countenance of my beloved Seri, and in weary grief did I weep for the pain I must bring to her beauteous eyes.
CHAPTER 26
Seri
“Watch for my signaclass="underline" two flashes, a pause, and then one more. All will be well, my lady. You’ll see.” With a touch of my hand, Paulo vanished into the night. A very dark night.
The ruins of Calle Rein - the Lion’s Grotto - lay like a smudge of soot on the black cloak of the desolate valley. Only a few stars glimmered in the enveloping midnight, the last outriders of the glittering heavens of Avonar, just as the ragged thorn bushes and the gray, brittle grasses that braved the scree were the last remnants of life and growth that marked the border of the Wastes. Not a breath of wind stirred the chill air, and only the screech of a hunting owl, echoing from the barren cliff walls behind me, marred the heavy silence.
There… A pinprick of light flared briefly from the ruin, as if one of the lonely stars had given up its fight against the encroaching darkness and fallen into the valley. Had someone noted the dark figure so carefully picking his way down the rocky slope toward the light? Who was waiting inside the broken stone walls so far below me?
Foolish, all our precautions. If the one who awaited us in Calle Rein was not who he claimed to be, then the place would surely be surrounded with enchantments - wards to let him know his grand trap was sprung. But if he was only what he claimed, and he was alone, we had nothing to fear.
The excitement and anticipation that sharpened my vision, pricked my ears, and made the hair rise on my neck at every whisper had no relation to the truth of the night’s events. Such reactions must be a remnant of a primeval innocence, when life was a constant wonder, and survival depended on the scents and sounds carried on the night wind.
Dread was my proper companion as I hid in the rocks above Calle Rein, and her brother grief hovered on the dark horizon, for unless some miraculous circumstance intervened, my child would die before morning, and the true heart of my husband die with him. It was a mutual sacrifice of such unfathomable proportion that only the salvation of three worlds could demand it. And I - a woman of some experience, but not the least shred of power - was the only voice that dared cry out that the price was far too high. I could not allow it. Not if the Lords of Zhev’Na themselves were to die alongside my son at the hand of his father - not even for that could I permit it.
I had stayed with Karon all through the Rite of Purification, hiding in the shadows while he struggled with his demons. No reassurance of Ven’Dar’s could alleviate my terror when he dropped below the surface of each pool and failed to emerge for hours at a time.
“Is it truly necessary to put him through this, Preceptor?” I said, after watching my love stagger blindly from the Pool of Darkness to the Pool of Oblivion. “If it won’t reverse the change… ”