“What foolishness is this, Ben’Shar?” Karon snapped. His hard gaze whipped about the room, passing over Ven’Dar and me without a moment’s pause. “I see no intruder. These ‘rumblings’ you noted must have come from your own belly. Was I dragged from a Preceptorate meeting because you failed to digest your lunch?”
“But, my lord, it was a powerful enchantment - a winding, I’m sure of it,” said the stooped man, scratching his chest as his eyes darted about the room. “This prison block is a snarl of windings. I’m never wrong about these things.”
“Perhaps the prisoner himself has a rumbling belly,” said Men’Thor, peering through the bars. “Clearly he hungers, and there’s not enough pain and fear in Avonar on which to gorge himself. Perhaps he summons his dark brethren to feed him.”
“Their need is their weakness,” said Radele, softly. No one could have heard him save Ven’Dar and me, who were but a hand’s-breadth from his back.
“You have no idea of what my ‘dark brethren’ are capable,” said the voice from behind the bars - a voice so cold, so alien to the sweet vision that still hung in my memory, that I wondered if I’d missed seeing some other prisoner locked in with my son. “These pitiful bands you use to detain me are but sand to the hurricane of their power. They’ll devour you, and you can’t even see it coming. Touch my mind. Open the door you find there, and you’ll see what your Prince has seen. You’ll understand how they appreciate mind-stealing murderers like you and your son.”
“Silence!” roared Karon, slamming his hands into the bars. “You will not speak, Dieste… Destroyer. For four years you’ve twisted words, twisted lives, befouled the world with your deceptions. No more. Tomorrow you will show what you really are. Let your putrid brethren come when you cry out to them, and I’ll put an end to them, too.” Karon raised his fist toward the cell, and the bars began to glow, first silvery blue, and then yellow. And when they flared a brilliant white that seared my eyes, from behind them came a scream of such mortal agony that the Dar’Nethi warriors shrank from it, and the old man Ben’Shar covered his ears. Ven’Dar pressed his hand to my mouth, but he could stop neither my tears nor his own.
Once the interminable cry had died away, a stone-faced Karon pushed past his companions and the guards and vanished into the outer passage. The shaken soldiers stood aside to let a somber Men’Thor and the stooped Watcher pass, but Radele did not accompany them.
After the last guards had left the chamber, Radele stepped up to the wall of fading fire and peered into the dark silence beyond it. “He’ll speak no vileness for a while,” he said to no one, as he stroked the bars with his fingertips. “A taste of the Heir’s power looks to be quite effective. It would finish the devils forever if wielded properly.”
His face fierce and determined, Radele spun on his heel and followed the others into the passage.
When all was quiet and dim once again, Ven’Dar, still pressing me tightly to the wall, spoke in a quiet voice that I thought might bore a hole in my skull. “Your son lives. There is nothing to be done for him, except what he and his father ask of you. Hide yourself away until the time is right. Hold him in your heart… and the Prince also.”
When the Preceptor released me I hurried to the cell and fell to my knees, gripping the still-warm bars. Gerick sprawled facedown on the stone floor. Unmoving. On his arms were long, angry scratches as if he’d tried to claw the manacles away. I had no talent to tell me he lived, and saw no other sign of it, so I had to take Ven’Dar’s word. “This is not over, dear one,” I said to him, as the Preceptor drew me away.
Like shadows we passed through the guard posts once again, and into a maze of deserted back stairs, dusty storage rooms, and passageways long unused. Dusk lingered in a weed-grown courtyard. I followed Ven’Dar without question. It was as well Gerick had lain unhearing, for my brave words had no more substance than a single raindrop in the desert. It mattered not in the least what I did. I put no faith in Ven’Dar’s hopeful intimation that there was some underlying purpose in what I had just witnessed.
Up three flights of stairs. At the end of a long, unlit passage hung with cobwebs and faded tapestries - a passage that looked as if D’Arnath himself had been the last Dar’Nethi to walk it - the Preceptor pulled open a wide, plain door and ushered me into a beautifully appointed room, a softly lit haven of comfortable couches, deep carpets, and shelves of finely bound books. A fire popped and crackled in a brick fireplace, and on a small table next to it, ivory and jade chessmen stood ready on an onyx chessboard. Everywhere were small things - a watercolor of a lighthouse, an ivory horse, a needlework cushion - unmatched in the grace and loveliness of their working.
Yet the place might as well have been my hovel at Dunfarrie. Numb, heartsick, I sank into a fat, cushioned chair and laid my useless hands in my lap.
Ven’Dar pulled a footstool close to my chair and sat on it. His gray-blue eyes were troubled. “I cannot stay, my lady. Only a little while longer and my own hiding must end. I understand your grief, but I did not take you there to hasten it, magnify it, or resign you to it. I took you there to remind you of your power. Do not forget what you saw. Who you saw. Do not forget what you’ve given him all these years. Hold fast. The Lords of Zhev’Na hate you as they have hated no one since D’Arnath himself. Here at the culmination of their thousand-year war, you, a seemingly powerless woman, have denied them their prize twice over. You must not falter in this third challenge.”
He enfolded my cold hands in his warm ones. “Tonight, at one hour past moonrise, the Prince will speak to the people of Avonar from the balcony you can see from that window over there. Even now his messengers summon the Dar’Nethi from the Vales, from the borderlands, from the Wastes, from the city - at least one person from every family. Whatever may be the result of my lord’s words, know that you bear my deepest regard, and that in any way that may be possible, I will be forever at your service.”
He lifted my limp hand and kissed it, and then he rose and left me there alone.
CHAPTER 29
For an hour after Ven’Dar left I sat in my chair and indulged in self-pity, an exercise at which I began to think I could become quite expert. Why had they bothered to bring me out of my living death, if only to witness horror? Why open my ears, if they were only to hear my husband in mad rage and my child in agony, and no explanation for any of it? What had gone wrong at Calle Rein just when I believed Karon had put D’Natheil in his place?
But an hour was enough. Self-pity would change nothing, and I had never been able to abide unanswerable questions. I forced myself to get up and walk about the room, hoping the activity might stimulate some semblance of purposeful thought. Carafes of wine and water stood on a sideboard, alongside one of the marvelous Dar’Nethi ceramic teapots that stayed constantly warm. I poured myself tea and then abandoned the cup on the oaken table when I wandered over to one of the windows draped in gauzy fabric the color of jade.
The window looked out over the grand commard and parkland that fronted the palace. No sign yet of the rising moon, so Ven’Dar’s mystery would have to wait. The evening was quiet in the city, only a few people hurrying past. Where were Bareil and Roxanne? Surely the Dulcé would bring the princess to safety when it became clear I had left the Precept House by another way.
Absentmindedly I moved to the bookshelves and brushed my fingers over one of the leather-bound books, noting to my surprise that its title was in Leiran. The next also, and the next - and all of them familiar. On the shelf was a book of Isker poetry, and beside it a book of Vallorean folktales - very like one I had cherished long ago. I looked about the room again, wondering at it. Everything was just on the edge of familiarity. Nothing mysterious, nothing of magical design save the teapot. A burnished brass lectern stood by the windowed wall, positioned to take advantage of the light. A suspicious guess as to what I might find there was proved right when I found a silver flute lying on a sheet of music that had been transcribed in a fine hand.