At the second landing, Bareil pressed my arm, pointed to the first door in the passage, and then motioned me to continue upward. The Dulcé guided Roxanne through the door and closed it behind her. He snatched a book from one of the tables and leaned casually against the door, ready to watch the stair behind me.
I tiptoed around the corner, up the last stair, and down the passage. The wood floor of the third-level passage was thick with dust, unmarked by footprints. The dim sunlight from a grimy round window at the far end of the passage revealed no furnishings but a scuffed leather trunk shoved to one side, its brass fittings tarnished to the color of iron, and two broken chairs, shoved into one corner. Open doors revealed a series of small, unfurnished rooms. Closed doors were plain and unmarked. Storage rooms and student rooms, Bareil had said.
The last door on the right appeared to have been attacked by an army of small boys. Dents, gouges, and scorch marks marred its plain surface. A closer look revealed the traces of a large, flamboyant V that had been boldly incised into the door panel and then painstakingly scraped away.
Carefully I pressed the latch and swung the door inward. Unlike the other rooms I had glimpsed off this passage, this chamber was large and bright. Its furnishings were simple - little more than bed, table, two chairs, well stocked bookshelf, and a patterned rug of green and yellow. But its grace was a ceiling-high window that overlooked a sparkling lake surrounded by green hills, a living landscape that, as it happened, existed nowhere near this particular room… this sorcerer’s room. Ven’Dar stood gazing out of the magical window, his hand stroking his short beard. The afternoon light bathed him in a golden glow, restoring his graying hair to its youthful coloring. He did not move when I stepped into the room.
“Master Ven’Dar,” I said.
He jerked and spun about. “Lady Seriana! What are you doing here? How did you find me?”
“A friend’s surmise.”
“Bareil… He shouldn’t have. You ought to be at the palace.”
I closed the door behind me and walked as far as the patterned rug. “Why should I? Explain it to me.”
He turned to the window again. “You haven’t spoken with him?”
“Not since he told me to run from Calle Rein and hide. I don’t even know from what or whom I was hiding.”
“The Prince had informed Men’Thor and Radele that he would meet with his son on the third day from my ‘death.’ The two of them came to the caves, hoping to meet with him as soon as the rite was completed. To ensure his resolve had not wavered, of course. The Prince managed to evade them when he set out after you, but he commanded Bareil to leave the caves at the expected time and reveal his destination. He could not give the Preceptorate reason to doubt either his loyalty or his intent. Not until he knew more. He just didn’t expect them to catch up with him so quickly.”
“What have they done with Gerick? What’s Karon’s plan?”
“My lady, I - ” Ven’Dar had been so much at peace, so sure of himself in his tower and in the Caves of Laennara, but now his quiet was the uneasy stillness of a summer afternoon with thunderheads looming black on the horizon. He tugged at his beard, and his gaze flicked from me to the window and back again. “Your son is in the palace. Many years ago a cell was built there for Dar’Nethi who must be held… powerless.”
“He is imprisoned, then.”
With a slight movement of shoulder and hand, Ven’Dar acknowledged it.
“What’s to happen to him? I know Karon was here not an hour past. What did he say?”
Ven’Dar grimaced. “I can tell you nothing more.”
“You cannot or will not?”
He shook his head and pointed to a chair. “Sit down with me. We’ll have a glass of wine and talk for a while. Perhaps I can help you understand.”
I remained standing. “Gerick is my son. I have a right to know what’s going to happen to him.”
“My lady,” he said, “please do not ask me questions I cannot answer.”
Karon believed Ven’Dar to be a man who prized keeping faith with the Way of the Dar’Nethi above safety, above comfort, above everything else he valued. A man supremely honest. Even in our short acquaintance, I had seen enough to confirm that opinion. No amount of sarcasm or fury, wheedling or tears, was going to get me anywhere Ven’Dar wasn’t prepared to take me. “Then tell me this, Preceptor. Who swore you to this oath? Was it Karon or was it D’Natheil?”
He flinched as if I’d slapped him. Then, sighing heavily, he looked me full in the eye. “I don’t know. I hope. I’ve gambled… heavily… on the answer. But I don’t know.”
I walked over to his window and glared at the pastoral landscape. Ven’Dar wisely kept his peace until I spoke again. Only one other person might know what was happening. In only one place might I be able to do something. “I must see Gerick,” I said at last.
Ven’Dar rubbed the back of his neck, grimacing and nodding. “I agree. You should.”
I was so prepared for a refusal or some further claim of ignorance or oath-swearing that I was left stammering. “But - Well, then. Will you take me?”
“The Prince will have my head for it, if I’m not careful. And we’d best go now. The sooner the better, I think. But I beg of you, my lady… afterward… do as the Prince asks you. Our only hope is in his wisdom and in the work we’ve done to bring him to this point with his true heart. You must stay hidden until he is ready to reveal his purpose. His enemies must believe you are dead.”
“I’ll think about it after I’ve seen Gerick.”
I didn’t see Bareil as we crept down the stairs, and I dared not delay to search for him lest Ven’Dar change his mind. The Dulcé would figure out what had happened.
We left the Precept House grounds by way of a tree-shaded path and a small gate, hidden in a tangle of overgrown ivy that seemed to grow back thicker than before as soon as we tore our way through it. Ven’Dar led me through the city, pausing at each turning of the way to move his hand as if brushing sand from the path in front of us. No gaze settled on us all the way to the palace.
Soon Ven’Dar was leading me down a long sloping passageway through the heart of the fortress of the Princes of Avonar. Lamps mounted along the polished gray walls of the passage flared into life as we approached and faded again when we were well past, a small wonder in a city of wonders. In another life I would have asked Ven’Dar how such things fit with the science and nature I knew. In another life, I could imagine Ven’Dar joining the stimulating company at Windham, jousting with my cousin Martin over the proper uses of magic and the comparative delights of conversation and mind-speaking. That would not have been the life where my son was the prisoner of my husband.
When we came to a metal-banded door at the end of the passage, the Preceptor pressed a finger to his lips. Then he closed into himself for a moment, so clearly removing himself from the existence I shared that I half expected him to vanish. But, instead, he spread his upturned hands slightly apart as if strewing a handful of seeds for a flock of birds. When his eyes blinked open, he pressed a finger to his lips yet again and cautiously pulled the huge door open.
Across an empty, windowless room of massive stone, four guards, two with pikes, two with drawn swords, barred access to an iron gate. But as Ven’Dar took my hand and led me across the chamber, their eyes did not move in the slightest. We slipped around behind them and through the gate without challenge. Yet, in the instant we latched the iron gate behind us, one of the four hurried across the room and slammed his open palm against the outer door, peering into the outer passage and yelling, “Who’s there?”