The Soul Weaver (53 page)

She slapped her palm on the stopper of the blue flask, cramming it tight, then stuffed flask and cup back into a worn gray rucksack.

“Three days ago, he came back,” she continued. “After ten dreary days with his mostly dead body, and I thought I was going to be here forever and not even know quite where, I wake up in the morning to find him walking around like he'd just dozed off for an hour. He ate half the food we had left and told me about what had happened with Paulo and you and the list enchantment. He said we'd just have to wait to see what came about next. But it wasn't two hours until he turned fifty colors of white, and I thought we were dead, because it was just the way he'd look when the firestorms came. Those storms were the most terrifying things, as if the world were shattering to bits. The poor Singlars would get caught in them, and their towers disintegrate right before your eyes, and one time I came near falling into one of the rifts and a Singlar pulled me out. It was the worst fright I've ever had. With Gerick looking so pale and awful, I expected
this
place to split open and fall apart any moment, but he said it wouldn't happen here, and maybe it wouldn't happen back in the Bounded either, if he could just turn off his head for a while. He felt so responsible. He said the storms were his fault, though I'll never believe that. He almost died trying to stop them. Do you think I'll ever get used to this, Lady Seriana? Bodies lying around with no minds in them, bodies walking around with two—”

She paused in her breathless chatter, staring at the doorway behind me. I whirled about, and I couldn't tell whether the iron-visaged figure who stood there was Karon or D'Natheil.

“Karon!” I said, choosing that it be so.

Gently, but firmly he took my arm and raised me up, moving me to the corner of the little room. When he returned to Gerick and looked down at him, the world paused in its spinning path.

Only the princess refused to heed the dread of that moment. Glancing at me briefly, she took up her story once again, as if she'd never been interrupted. “. . . so, before I quite understood what he meant, he took himself off again. I don't know exactly where.”

She wrinkled her straight nose and pursed her lips while shifting her unabashed stare to Karon. “And Gerick—my friend, Gerick—said to tell his father—I presume that's you—that he'd be waiting for you to fulfill your agreement. He didn't explain that part or anything about the enemies he was hiding from, and I find it quite annoying, as I've had all this time to think, and he didn't explain the most important part. ‘Too complicated, ' he'd say, which have to be the most exasperating words that can be spoken, and despite the fact that I'm almost two years older, and I helped him sort out all manner of things while he was being the king of the Bounded. He just said that if anyone could take care of the firestorms so the Singlars wouldn't suffer so from them, it was his father. The only thing he was afraid of was that Paulo wouldn't find you.”

“It took a number of people to find me,” said Karon, softly. “I thank you for your care for him, young lady. Now you'd best move closer to Seri. It will be safer. Or you might want to step outside.”

“But you see, just as I've been telling the Lady, you don't have to pretend there's no sorcery involved here. I'm not afraid . . .” Roxanne's words limped into the void very quickly. She stood and backed away from Gerick and Karon, but only as far as my side. Her chin was still firm and high. Paulo, who had said nothing since Karon's arrival, stood behind us in the doorway.

Karon's hand was steady as he drew his silver dagger from its sheath. I wanted to stay his hand until I was sure of him, but terror robbed me of speech.

“Oh, demons, Gerick—” Roxanne gasped and lunged forward as Karon raised his glittering knife.

I grabbed her and drew her close, holding her tight and allowing her cry to loosen my own tongue. With all the hope I could muster, I said softly, “There are no demons here, Roxanne. No need to be afraid. This is Gerick's father, who cherished our son before he was even born, who led him out of the darkness once and will do so again. He's come here only to help him.”

At the same moment, Karon raised his other hand, closed his eyes, and with a passion that was all of his life, spoke words that would forever summon visions of a rainy summer afternoon at Windham, a frost-rimed Vallorean bandit cave, and a towering wall of white fire, blazing joyfully in a mountain fortress. “Life, hold. Stay your hand. Halt your foot ere it lays another step along the Way. Grace your son once more with your voice that whispers in the deeps, with your spirit that sings in the wind, with the fire that blazes in your wondrous gifts of joy and sorrow. Fill my soul with light, and let the darkness make no stand in this place.”

“It's all right. It's all right,” I whispered to the terrified girl, as Karon's knife left its bloody track across Gerick's limp forearm and his own scarred left arm. And while the golden flames danced on the ancient walls, the blaze of Karon's enchantment embraced us all.

We had basked in the warmth of Karon's magic no more than half an hour when Paulo slipped out of the ruin into the night. I thought nothing of it. There was too much else to consider, too much wondering at what was happening between the two who were bound together by a narrow strip of bloodstained linen. Such a monumental task as exploring the link that connected Gerick to the world he had created from the Breach . . . who knew if such a thing was even possible? And his connection to the Lords . . . I was all too aware that this blessed reprieve was only temporary. Judgment would come with Karon's withdrawal. I didn't want to hurry it, even if I could. Karon's work with Gerick after our return from Zhev'Na had taken as long as four or five hours each time, and I couldn't imagine this venture could take less.

So after Paulo's abrupt departure, I watched and continued whispering an explanation of Dar'Nethi healing to Roxanne.

But suddenly—far too soon—Karon's hand fumbled for his knife, and with a swift motion, he sliced through the strip of linen that bound his arm to Gerick's. He fell back on his heels, sweat beaded on his brow and soaking the tendrils of light hair dangling about his face, though our dying fire had invited the nighttime chill into our shelter. “Get out of here, Seri,” he said harshly. “Take the girl and hide. Empty your minds. Someone will come for you.”

Gerick was stirring, and I hesitated.

Karon waved his knife toward the door. “Go now! For everything—hurry!”

I jumped to my feet just as Paulo burst into the shelter. “Someone's coming. Horses beyond the ridge to the north.”

Karon had hunched his shoulders and closed his eyes, grimacing and cradling his bleeding left arm in his right. His incision did not close if the enchantment was interrupted. “Hurry!” he gasped.

“We'll go south,” I said, kicking dirt over the fire. Then I grabbed Roxanne's arm and pulled her out into the night. Halting abruptly in the deepest shadows next to the broken walls, I gave my eyes time to adjust to the dark, sacrificing the quick start for speedier going.

“What's happening?” demanded the princess, wresting her arm free. “What did he mean? What's he going to do?”

“I don't know. It didn't seem like the time to ask him. Now be quiet and come with me.”

I took off across the cracked dry earth of the valley floor, the reluctant princess lagging behind me.
For everything—hurry!
The distance across the exposed valley stretched impossibly far, and before very long a stitch in my side protested my long idleness. But the echo of Karon's command drove me on until we had scrambled up the rocky incline at the southern edge of the valley. I had to trust him.

“Here,” I said, collapsing behind the first boulder that commanded a view behind us. “I can't go any more just now.”

“I couldn't go any more half an hour ago,” said the panting girl. “What happened?”

“I don't know. Maybe something went wrong in the healing, or . . . I just don't know.”

“Is the earth going to open up, something like that, like the firestorms in the Bounded? I've become accustomed to other things, but not that.”

“I don't think so. But, Roxanne, if I tell you someone's coming, I want you to clear your mind of every thought. Focus your attention on a rock or the sky, but don't think of where you are or who you are or anyone or anything you know. No questions, no sounds or sensations, no fears. Make yourself empty. Do you understand me? Do you think you can do that?”

“Like ‘think of yourself out'? I believe I'm beginning to speak your sorcerer's language.”

“The less substantial your thoughts, the more difficult for anyone to locate you with sorcery. We'll hope we won't have to do it.”

Across the dark valley, blurs of light moved rapidly down the slope where I had lain waiting such a short time ago. Riders carrying torches, at least ten horsemen. A few of them dismounted at the ruin, and light soon blazed from inside the walls as well as out. After a time, three men emerged from the ruin, leading someone who stumbled and fell. They dragged him up and placed him on the back of a horse, binding his hands to the saddle. Slender shoulders, long legs, dark hair . . . Gerick.

I half expected Karon to be brought out a prisoner also. But he strolled out in the company of two other men. After conferring with them for a moment, he walked over to Gerick and raised his arms. Bolts of white fire sparked from his hands. An agonized cry pierced the night, and Gerick slumped forward in the saddle.

“No!” I leaped to my feet, only to be dragged down instantly. I lay slumped in the dirt, my elbow and chin stinging after grazing the sandy boulder.

“This doesn't seem like the time, my lady.” The girl's hands were steady as she brushed the grit from my face and helped me sit up again.

Roxanne crept upward to peer out at the valley across our sheltering boulder. But I drew my knees up tight and buried my head in my arms, trying to cry out the knots that choked off breath and tears, condemning me to dry shudders.

“They're riding back the way they came,” said the girl, slipping down the rock face to sit beside me again. “His father leading.” She laid her hand on my back. “They put one of the soldiers up behind him, as if to hold him in the saddle, so he's not dead. And another interesting thing.
Everyone
rode out. No horses left behind. No guards posted. No torches left. But Paulo wasn't with them. I'll be right back.”

“Roxanne, wait! Don't . . .”

The stars wheeled slowly above me. The cold wind blew off the desert. I could not bring myself to watch whatever foolish mission the girl had contrived. If this night demanded more grieving, it could not wrest it from me. Eventually, plodding steps crunched and slid on the steep gravel-strewn path.

“Whew!” A warm body flopped down at my side.

“Well, Paulo's not dead, either. He didn't go with them, and he didn't stay behind, dead or alive, that I can see. So he's either wandered out into the desert again or run away somewhere—perhaps back to the Bounded the way we came. That's a good sign, don't you think?”

Something in her question forced me to look outside my private horror and glance over at her. Tears rolled silently down her dusty cheeks, and her face was etched with fear and grief and the yearning of a courageous child who has been too long from home. I gathered her in, and Evard's daughter and I held each other through the long, cold night.

 

Sunrise brought searing heat. Roxanne and I kept watch atop our boulder, taking turns once the shade began to dwindle. As we waited, I told her about Radele and Men'Thor and their plotting, about Karon and D'Natheil and my fragile hopes, shattered so inexplicably last night. Near mid-morning, about the time doubts began to sap my spirit along with the withering sun, I spotted a lone traveler on the northern rim of the valley, leading two riderless horses.

“Clear your mind as I told you,” I said, shrinking down beside the rock. “Think of the emptiest place you know and erase each object and association you find there.”

I followed my own instructions, but kept my eyes trained on the rider through a slot between our rock and another. A needless precaution. As soon as the rider—a slight figure that might have been a woman or a youth—passed the ruin, he peered up at the rocks at our end of the valley, shading his eyes with his hand. When he reached the base of our slope, he pulled off his hood, revealing olive skin, wiry black hair, and neatly trimmed beard, and eyes that, had they not been squinting, would have displayed the elongated oval shape of an almond. Quickly, I climbed onto our sheltering boulder and waved. “Up here, Bareil!”

Karon's Guide raised his hand in greeting and dismounted as Roxanne and I slipped and slithered down the graveled slope. “It is good to find you none the worse for your night in the open, my lady,” said Bareil, bowing in the Dulcé fashion, one arm behind his back, the other extended.

“And it's very good to see you,” I said. “It would have been a long dry day. Your Highness, this gentleman is Bareil of the Dulcé, my husband's friend and confidante. Bareil, Her Royal Highness Roxanne, Crown Princess of Leire.”

The Dulcé repeated his bow and expressions of pleasure, though his demeanor was uncharacteristically somber. The formalities seemed surreal in the harsh surroundings. The girl and I were filthy and travel-worn, and, without regard for manners or breeding, we grasped the two waterskins Bareil detached from his saddle. And, of course, no protocol could keep the activities of the previous night at arm's length.