“Read this again, my lord.” The Preceptor’s eagerness and wonder had dimmed, but not his urgency or conviction. “Your son neither denies that he did these things, nor does he supply any easy explanation. He understands it no more than we do. Less, in fact, because he has so little knowledge of Dar’Nethi talents. More is involved here than soul weaving, though I am convinced your son’s talent is the mechanism by which these horrors are accomplished. Paulo, tell the Prince how young Gerick came to believe he was the betrayer, even though he has no remembrance of the deeds.”
“To explain it, I got to tell you where we were, and what happened there… ” Paulo told Karon of the strange land called the Bounded, and of the Singlars, the Guardian, the firestorms, and the Source, and of the day Gerick saved his life by taking over his body and then gave it back again.
“Is it not a marvel?” whispered Ven’Dar.
Karon did not answer, but motioned for Paulo to continue. And so he did, telling the story of Gerick’s devastation when he saw the oculus in the cave of the Source and heard the revelation of his own crimes, and how he then made this desperate plan to arrange his death on his own terms.
Karon shook his head and scraped his fingers through his hair. “I can’t see beyond the Lords, Ven’Dar. I hear speculation and possibility and the faith of a true friend. But I hear nothing to prove that his connection to this new world is a result of Dar’Nethi talent and not the Lords taking control of the Breach as they have craved for a millennium. If I do as Gerick asks, link with his mind, only to find I have linked with the Lords… ”
Ven’Dar nodded. “You have told me the story of your own coming to talent, my lord. Of how desperation to save your young brother’s life forced you to take up the knife and recite the Healer’s invocation. You’ve told me how only when you looked back through the years could you recognize the precursors of your talent: aversion to combat, fear of carrying a knife, a thirst to know how the human body worked…
“Now consider your son. He has told young Paulo here that he’s been seeing visions of the past: his mother as a young woman, his friend Paulo as a crippled child, and his true father’s face - your true face - that no portrait has ever shown him. And each of these visions occurred in the presence of the person most concerned. He has dreamed their dreams, felt their joy and shame, experienced the pain of a broken wrist that was his father’s, not his own. I believe he has been slipping in and out of souls, uncontrolled.
“And even earlier, what do we see? What could be the trigger that charted his course? Desperation, just as you experienced. Four years ago, on your journey out of Zhev’Na, desperate to escape the pain of separation from the Lords, your son’s soul fled his own body. Not understanding what was happening, unable to control his gift, he could not seek refuge in any of you three. That left him adrift in chaos… as if he were a part of the Breach itself. I believe that by his act, he imposed order upon the crippled bits of matter and sentience that existed there, forming a solid center… a source… from which a world has grown - immature, awkward, with all of the spotty wisdom and ignorance of a sixteen-year-old who has experienced too much and too little of living. He loaned a world his life.”
“And that’s why the firestorms come near killing him as they destroy the Bounded,” said Paulo.
“And why the Source knew what he’d done, even though he didn’t realize it himself,” I said. “Because the Source is a reflection of himself.”
“Yes,” said the Preceptor. “And when this strange joining occurred as you traversed the Breach, he was still connected to the Lords… ”
“… through the jewels and the mask they had given him in Zhev’Na… ” I said.
“… and so the Lords indeed obtained their foothold in the Breach.” Ven’Dar’s conclusion dropped a pall of silence over us, so that Gerick’s desperate plea echoed in that firelit cavern as if he stood before us. If it was possible for Gerick’s link to the Bounded to be severed, a Healer of Karon’s skill and power was the only one likely to accomplish it.
Karon stood up and walked away from the fire into the shadows. Only after a long time did he speak, his voice no more yielding than the stone walls of that cavern. “And so you agree that Lords are still part of him, that the oculus in the cave of the Source is the manifestation of his soul’s link to them. Somehow, they can control him, just as he says, and make him do things he would not, even to attempting the life of his mother.”
“Yes, my lord. This connection lay dormant for four years, manifest only in nightmares and the boy’s unsettled nature. But I believe it was rekindled when you took him across the Bridge that night. Everything started after - ”
“And have you even considered the rest of it? If all this is true - if he’s been in the mundane world and the Breach and now here in Gondai - then he has taken his friend Paulo across the Breach unscathed, not with struggle and difficulty and expense of power as I do, but easily. Do you know what that means? Do you see the implication? The danger? The impossibility? It means he can transport Zhid between worlds.”
“Indeed. It would seem so,” said Ven’Dar, quietly. “My hope is that when you go to him knowing all of this, you and the boy together will discover how to resolve the problem. Your son needs to understand he is not evil, my lord. As do you. If nothing else, perhaps you will be able to do what he asks of you.”
The knot around my heart drew tighter yet. Karon’s resolve was written in his face. The rite… the revelations… had led us nowhere new.
“Where is he, Paulo?” Karon’s words hung in the air like a headsman’s ax.
“What will you do?” I blurted out before Paulo could answer.
“Tell me my choices, Seri.”
“There’s got to be another way, now we know he’s not one of them. They’re just using him.”
“For now.”
I stood up, too. Though I fought to stay calm and reasoned, my voice rose. “So what prevents the Lords from crushing Avonar right now? What prevents them controlling him all the time? There’s something else at work here, and you can’t stop looking for answers just because Gerick has. He doesn’t understand what he is, so his solution may not be the only one. We just need time…”
“Time is exactly what we don’t have. If there is the smallest possibility that I can do what he asks, what Ven’Dar has tried to give me the chance to do, it must be now. The war won’t wait. If the Lords come to this same conclusion, they won’t wait. And D’Natheil won’t wait.” He turned his back on me. “Where is he, Paulo?”
“Half a day’s ride, my lord. A ruin out at the edge of the Wastes near the place you found me. The young master said it must have once been a portal between worlds, like the one in Valleor where we went into the Bounded, as it was easy to find once he knew to look. I’ll take you there.”
“Perhaps I could make a portal to take us there, my lord,” said Ven’Dar. “It would take me only an hour or two.”
“No. No portal so close to Avonar. Not when we can’t be sure - ”
Not when he wasn’t sure who would be waiting for us on the other side of it.
“I don’t mind riding,” I said.
“You’re not going.”
The ten paces between Karon and me stretched wider, across the cavern, across Paulo and Ven’Dar and the litter of packs and supplies and pulsing coals… across sixteen years of grief and anger and longing, of loneliness and pain.
“Gerick is our son, Karon. I will not abandon him.”
The waves of the Pool of Rebirth, wreathed in mist beyond the shadowed arch, lapped softly.
“I will do what I have to do, Seri. I cannot say what that will be. But neither my own desires nor my feelings for you can weigh in my decision.” He had not moved from the growing shadows, so I could not see his face, only the shape of his powerful body, taut and still.