The Soul Weaver (5 page)

“You're kind to help the woman. Stay as long as you need. We'll manage.”

The house was quiet. Tennice was away in Yurevan, visiting friends at the University. From a distance came the echo of a child's laughter—Teriza's niece Kat, most likely enjoying a tease with Paulo while taking him a late supper in the stables. He was sitting with Tennice's bay mare and her two-day-old foal, the first to be born under Paulo's sole care.

I threw a log on the library fire and poked at the smoldering coals until it caught. Then I turned up the lamp beside my chair and pulled needle, thread, and a skirt with a ripped hem from a neglected basket on the floor. Though I detested sewing, stitching helped impose some order on my thoughts. . . .

A soft kiss on my forehead woke me. Moonlight streamed through the garden door, outlining the shadowed form with silver.

“Karon . . .” I smiled through my lingering dreams, knowing he could sense my pleasure even in the dark.

“He's home safely and on his way to bed.” His wide hand brushed away the hair stuck to my cheek. “An uneventful journey. He can tell you. But a first step. Soon, love . . . soon.”

He lifted me in his arms, carried me up the stairs, and laid me in my bed, pulling the coverlet over my shoulders. The scents of Verdillon's emerald grasses and the rustle of ash leaves brushed by soft air drifted through the open window of my room. The leaves were rimmed with silver, and their fluttering created dancing patterns of moonlight on the walls. Another lingering kiss and he was gone. I smiled and slipped into peaceful slumber. . . .

 

“No more! I will not!” The agonized cry shattered the night.

I threw off the coverlet, my sluggish mind struggling to recall why I was in bed fully dressed. But my feet knew what was needed and hurried down the softly lit passage. Gerick huddled in his bed asleep. Fear, revulsion, and denial rolled through the bedchamber like dark waves, pushing me away even as I pulled his quivering shoulders into my embrace. “Gerick. Wake up. You're safe at Verdillon. Nothing can harm you here.”

His eyes flew open, but whatever horror they looked upon was not in the realm of waking. He clung to me as if he were in the grip of a whirlwind. “No! Stop!”

“Gerick, it's only dreams, just vile, wicked dreams.” I held him tight, stroking his shining hair and rocking him slowly until his fevered trembling eased and his cries died away. As had happened on so many other nights, he blinked and was awake. I knew to let go then. He would accept no comfort once he was awake.

“What is it, Gerick?” I asked, as he rose from the bed and stood at the open window, a blanket pulled tightly about his shoulders despite the warmth of the night. “What frightens you so?”

“It's only dreams. They're nothing. I'm sorry I wake you.”

“If only you'd let your father help you.” I knew it was wrong as soon as I said it.

“I don't need his help. Please, Mother, I'll be all right.”

And so, as always, I kissed his forehead and returned to my room. From my window, I watched him stride across the moonlit courtyard toward the stables, ready to drag Paulo from his bed to join him for a predawn gallop through the neighboring fields and forests. Once again I blessed Paulo, who seemed to be the only person Gerick could turn to in his need. When I returned to my bed, I lay puzzling again at what triggered Gerick's nightmares, the bright hopes of the evening tarnished.

Gerick had already finished breakfast by the time I went downstairs the morning after Karon's visit. I didn't know whether he'd ever gone back to bed, but he always did exercises in the yard before his breakfast, so any sleeping he'd done would have been very short. In late morning I found him in the library, standing next to a small table on which lay an open book. He was running his fingers over the page, and he started when I wished him a good morning.

“Ah, just the person I need.” He grabbed my arm and dragged me to the large library worktable, patting a pile of manuscripts and papers. “You
must
rescue me. Tennice set me to read fifty pages on Leiran-Vallorean border disputes by tomorrow, but my Vallorean just isn't good enough to make any sense of it. Do you have time to give me a boost?”

“Of course. But you must pay my fee first. You can guess I'm rabid to know about last night. Your father said the journey was uneventful . . .”

Gerick's face closed down and his whole body tightened, as always happened with any direct questioning. His hand on the stack of papers fell motionless. I would have sworn he had stepped away from me, though his feet had not moved. But then he shrugged his shoulders and glanced up, before quickly averting his eyes. “The Bridge was amazing, the crossing not half so fearful as I expected. Horrible things all around, but not touching me this time. Not inside me. It felt almost . . . familiar.”

I shuddered a little, recalling our journey out of Zhev'Na through the chaotic Breach.

“And the Gate . . . I'd never imagined it, the power of the enchantment. But it was a long journey for the short time we spent on the other side—less than an hour. He showed me his apartments, his private library, and a marvelous map of the whole world of Gondai that hangs in the air, so you can see the actual landforms and the mountains rising up from the plains. We walked down the passage to his lectorium, but he heard one of his Preceptors still working in there, so we didn't go in. He hadn't expected anyone to be about. We were out of time, anyway.”

He pulled a chair up close to the worktable and drew his papers toward him. “I'd best get to work now.”

“Thank you for telling me.”

“Mmm.” He dug a thick sheaf of papers from the stack. “Here's what I was having trouble with . . .”

We spent a pleasant hour with no further mention of the night's adventure or his nightmare. When he had his task well in hand, I took up the letter I'd come to finish.

As the clock in the hall below us struck the noon hour, Gerick threw down his pen and shoved a rolled manuscript across the table. “That will have to be enough,” he said. “My eyes have gone crossways, and the pen's gouged a ridge through my fingers.”

“I doubt you'll suffer the ill effects for long,” I said. “It's an important subject. Border disputes are blamed for every war between Leire and Valleor, but if you read the histories, you'll see how much more there is to it. Leirans think of Valloreans as soft and corrupt. Valloreans think of Leirans as ignorant barbarians. Both are quite wrong. And someday you'll recognize what a liberal-minded statement that is from your Leiran mother!”

“I don't see what use it is for me to learn such things.” He stripped off his coat and threw it on a chair. “I'll finish it later. I need to see what's up in the stables.”

Leaving unspoken the motherly platitudes that came to mind, I returned to my own project. Peace, routine, care that did not smother, whatever we could of a normal upbringing in a gentleman's house, that's what we tried to provide for Gerick.

I instructed him in languages, composition, mathematics, “motherly” things like manners, and unmotherly things like the politics of the Four Realms. Tennice tutored him in philosophy, rhetoric, history, and law, and tried to speak with him of matters a sixteen-year-old boy might not wish to discuss with his mother. Paulo was his friend; Teriza, the housemaid, treated him with respectful distance; and thirteen-year-old Kat was his worshipper. He had been uncomfortable, at first, with the serving girl's unremitting devotion, but her innocent charm had worn away enough of his reserve that he could accept her small services with a solemn and gracious demeanor. It seemed to help that Kat worshipped Paulo in exactly the same way.

The only area in which our regimen differed from that of most Leiran households was in its emphasis on the intellect at the expense of military training. As a boy at Comigor, Gerick had been provided with a fencing master, and it had been his childhood ambition to be a master of the sword as my brother Tomas—the man he had once believed to be his father—had been.

But Gerick had not touched a sword since leaving Zhev'Na. He had vowed to forego physical opposition of the Lords when he became one of them, and, to seal his oath, the Three had melted his weapon as it lay on his palms, scarring them horribly. Karon didn't know whether Gerick's refusal to take up the weapon again was based in the belief that using a sword in any way would be a violation of his vow—bearing arms against those he had sworn not—or whether the experiences of Zhev'Na had somehow made the sword repugnant to him. The question remained as yet another mystery Gerick could not or would not explain.

When, in my turn, I was ready to leave the library, I indulged a bit of curiosity. The book that had interested Gerick was a journal belonging to the late Professor Ferrante, a history scholar at the University in Karon's student days and one of the few people in the Four Realms who had known that Karon was a sorcerer. Our friend Tennice had inherited this house when the professor was murdered by the Zhid. On the open page were Ferrante's notes from a time twenty years past, scribblings of students' names and assignments, notations of appointments and tutorials. I could see no item more interesting than the others, until I came to one near the bottom of the page.

Gerick must have guessed the passage was about Karon in his student days, as I knew it was. Karon's left arm had already been covered with scars, each one the mark of a healing he'd done and a telltale to anyone hunting evidence of sorcery. As I descended the stairs, I wondered if Karon still felt the ache in his left wrist when winter came, even though the bone was not the same one broken in the fall so long ago. How much of memory resides in the physical body and how much resides in the soul? That was another part of the lingering awkwardness between Karon and me; even after four years neither of us knew exactly how much of him remained. Surely if we had more time together, things would be easier.

The rest of the afternoon passed quietly as was usual at Verdillon. The stream of our life flowed peacefully here. I felt safe and hidden, despite the sullied hopes of the night.

After supper Tennice, back from Yurevan, challenged me to a game of chess. A grumbling Gerick returned upstairs to the library to finish his work, and Paulo headed back outdoors, leaving us alone in the sitting room.

I looked up from the chessboard, but Tennice's balding head was still bent over it. “What's the problem?” I said. “Can't you find a wicked enough move? You'll have me in three as it is.”

Tennice didn't look up, but twitched a bony hand in dismissal. “Hush, Seri. I thought you had better manners.”

“But you said—”

The voice wasn't Tennice's at all. “In the garden . . . of course . . . Yes, of course, come in! It's just Tennice here with me.”

Tennice looked up this time, his puzzlement quickly erased. “He's here again so soon?”

Twice in two days? Unheard of. Perhaps the time for closing the Circle had come sooner than expected. I hurried to the garden door to welcome him, not daring to hope that this visit meant a longer stay. To my surprise, Karon wasn't alone.

Awkwardly I folded my arms in front of me instead of wrapping them around him. “Come in, please. It's a fine night for company.” A slender, light-haired young man followed us through the back passage.

As soon as we reached the sitting room, Karon nodded formally to me and then to the young man, one hand extended toward each of us. “Madam, may I introduce Radele, son of Men'Thor yn Ustele? Radele, this is my wife, Lady Seriana Marguerite of Leire and our friend, Tennice de Salviet.” Karon then dropped his hands and clasped them behind his back. “I've brought Radele to stand guard here as I've said for so long I would.”

“Stand guard . . . has something happened?” I asked. Ever since our Dar'Nethi friend Kellea had returned to the village of Dunfarrie the previous year, Karon had wanted to bring in a Dar'Nethi to protect Gerick and the rest of us in ways only a sorcerer could do. He'd kept putting it off, saying he wanted to find someone he knew well enough to entrust with such a mission. Strange that he hadn't mentioned a word of this last night. “Have you given the signal already? The war—”