The Soul Weaver (61 page)

“I did everything you wanted, Father, and now we've won. The people have seen the Lords in their midst and witnessed the power of evil. They will follow us anywhere we wish to take them. With the mad Prince and his demon son dead, and the puling Ven'Dar out of the way, no one can hold us back. We will lead the host against Zhev'Na and we will prevail. What is it, Father? What's wrong? Everything is accomplished just as you wish.”

Men'Thor spun on his heels, and with a formality that seemed ridiculously out of place, he bowed to Karon, spreading his hands, palms up. “My lord Prince,” he said softly, “words cannot express my humiliation, my disgust, my dishonor at the despicable deeds of this traitorous fool I have sired. I accept full responsibility for his crimes, and may my actions, in some small part, remedy the damage he has wrought.
Ce'na davonet, Giré D'Arnath!
”

And before the red-faced Radele could digest the significance of his father's speech, Men'Thor straightened his back, drew his knife, and buried it in the belly of his son. With a twist and a jerk, the bloody implement was withdrawn and turned on its wielder, and before anyone could move, an ashen Men'Thor gave a single agonized sob and caught the slumping Radele. The two collapsed to the floor in a mortal embrace.

Horror robbed me of breath. Dread weighted my bones . . . my spirit . . . my soul. The spinning ring did not fall, but hung suspended in the air, pulsing and whirling in an obscene dance. Like a swelling bruise, it grew larger, a bilious swirl of purple and red and green. A cold wind swept through the guardroom, bearing the stench of old stone and foul smoke and such despair as would cause the bravest warrior to turn his weapon on himself.

“They come.” Gerick, still shackled to the table, struggled to his knees and raised dark, haunted eyes to Karon. “Father . . .”

Karon turned away. Crouching down beside Radele and Men'Thor, he felt their wrists for signs of life, closed their eyes, and murmured words of Dar'Nethi peace sending, as if no one else was in the room.

Gerick wrenched his gaze from Karon's forbidding back and looked about the room, bewildered. When his gaze fell on me, he shuddered, looking gray and sick. Then, taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes and lifted his head until the light of the orb lay full on his face.

The pulse of the swelling orb increased until it set my teeth on edge and skin aflame, forcing my very heartbeat to throb in time with it.

“They come.” Gerick's words were almost inaudible now, his eyes haunted. Hopeless. Lifeless. “Father, help me.”

This time Karon rose and turned to the stone platform. Grim and merciless, he drew his sword and stood waiting.

From out of the bitter wind and the whirl of the oculus rose whisperings to paralyze the blood, voices that grew louder and easier to distinguish one from the other, weaving their wickedness through the thick air like writhing snakes.

“You called us, Dieste?” As the voice sighed and slithered through the air, I envisioned Notole the Lore-master, the gray-haired hag whose face was of beaten gold and whose eyes were emeralds.

“Your acceptance of your destiny gives us great pleasure, little brother.” So spoke the wide-browed Parven, the Warmaster, he of the amethyst eyes.

“We had almost despaired of you, young Lord,” said Ziddari, so clearly present that I imagined his ruby eyes gleaming in the shadows beyond the orb, his voice still that of Darzid, my brother's lieutenant who had once been my friend and confided in me of his terrifying dreams. “We feel your craving, and desire nothing but to fill you as you ask. Let us remove your bonds, so that as we share this body, we can wield our power as one. Power is your birthright.”

Karon made no move to stop what was happening. Gerick lifted his hands to the orb, and the manacles snapped and fell away. He kicked the broken shackles from his ankles, then took another deep, shaking breath. “I've been powerless too long,” he said. He looked as fragile as winter moonlight. Yet with a flick of his index finger Karon's sword flew out of his hand, clattering against the far wall. “No need for ugly blades. My execution has been stayed.”

“And so you show yourself at last, Dieste,” said Karon. “All pretense stripped away. Radele didn't know that his maneuvering was unnecessary. You would have done everything he wanted without the oculus. You were looking for a way to go back all the time, weren't you? Is that why you carried this with you from one world to the next, awaiting the opportunity to make amends to your fellows, once you'd done all the damage you could do?”

From a leather bag at his waist, Karon pulled something that flashed gold in the strange light. He threw it onto the platform in front of Gerick. Gerick turned deathly white, then slowly extended his hand and picked up his mask, the Lords' gold mask with the diamond eyes that had been molded to his flesh when he became Dieste the Destroyer.

I wanted to scream. What was Karon doing? I was not wrong about Gerick. I was not. Why would Karon drive him back to the horror he had rejected?

Karon did not take his eyes from Gerick. He didn't even blink.

“I hunger!” cried my son, a spasm racking his slender frame, drawn from the very depths of despair. “Notole, help me! Ziddari . . . Parven . . . join with me . . . fill me!”

As his white fingers gripped the mask and lifted it to his face, he groaned with the animal hunger of a starving man who sees his first bread. Lust distorted his features, as his eyes darkened until they became pits of unending blackness. A blast of winter cut through my flesh, infusing me with the revolting pleasure of the Lords. They had him.

“Gerick! Dearest child, don't do it!” The cry burst from my lips and heart and soul all at once. “I know your true heart! You do not belong with the Lords!”

Gerick paused, and Karon moved at last, not with any weapon, but only his hand, holding it out where Gerick could not fail to see. “Come into me, my son,” he said softly. “My dear and beloved son.”

For one brief instant Gerick's bottomless eyes met my own and then shifted, coming to rest on his father. The world, the stars, the mighty universe held its breath along with me. And then Gerick reached for Karon's outstretched hand.

At their touch, thunder shook the foundations of Avonar. The Lords' unholy pleasure, their depraved satisfaction and unmuted lust were shattered by shock and dismay, as first Gerick and then Karon collapsed to the unyielding gray stone. For one instant, a hellish symphony of pain and terror and screeching disbelief rattled my bones . . .

. . . and then absolute silence fell upon the world.

As the light of the spinning orb winked out, I glimpsed the oculus and the gold mask fallen to the floor, sagging into a pool of molten metal, the two diamonds floating in it like sparkling eggs. Gerick lay crumpled on the stone platform. Karon sprawled across the edge of it, one hand still clasped in Gerick's. In my husband's other hand lay a small pyramid of polished black—Dassine's crystal where Karon's soul had been bound for ten dark years, the stone that held his long-postponed death.

I sank to my knees beside the two of them, and in the darkness that fell on me like a woolen blanket came a soft breath on my wet cheeks, an invisible touch that bore a lifetime of love and reassurance. Karon had taken Gerick to the only place he could be free of the Lords, a bittersweet gift from father to son, swift passage beyond the Verges to L'Tiere, the following life.

And what of the Lords?

Paulo brought the light. I sat on the stone platform where Karon and Gerick lay pale and still, feeling them grow cold even as I willed them not. Roxanne sat beside me, her head on my breast, weeping silently. As I stroked her hair, a certain calm settled over me, even as my own tears flowed unchecked.

“I had to go all the way back to the first guardroom to find this,” said Paulo, setting a small, sputtering torch in a bracket on the wall, revealing the devastation around us in ghastly clarity. “Nobody was about. Don't understand it.” He gazed down at Gerick. His voice was husky. “I guess he's free of 'em now. Don't seem fair. The Singlars are going to be torn up real bad.”

“I don't think Karon was able to save them,” I said. “If Gerick was right, then they're all destroyed.”

“The Bounded may be gone, ma'am . . . I don't know. But the Singlars are safe . . . well, as safe as anyone could be in Valleor.”

“You did it,” said Roxanne, lifting her head. “Just as we planned.”

“What are you talking about?” I said.

“Paulo took the Singlars out of the Bounded,” said Roxanne. “We planned it before we came here, gathering all the Singlars we could find into the Tower City and telling them to be ready to leave at a moment's notice. If it looked as if Gerick were going to die without a . . . solution . . . Paulo was to go back to the Bounded and take them out. Gerick believed that as long as he was alive the Singlars should be able to move through the passage up near this sheepherder's place in northern Valleor.”

“You really did such a thing?” I said to Paulo.

He nodded. “After the Prince sent you away the other night, knowing he had to kill the young master.” Tears filled Paulo's eyes. “They both knew it. So they sent me back. Wasn't nothing I could do here.”

I gathered Paulo into my arms, and we both wept for a while.

Roxanne decided when it had been enough. “Don't you think we should tell someone what's happened? They need to know about the Prince and all. And if I'm to get back home to see to the Singlars . . .”

“I'll go,” said Paulo, dabbing his face with his sleeve. “Nothing better to be at.”

 

Paulo returned to the dungeon inside the hour. He had found a troop of terrified warriors at the far end of the passage and asked to be taken to the Preceptors. “They stayed back from me, like maybe they wasn't sure whether I might be one of the Lords myself,” he reported.

But whatever the warriors had thought, they had taken Paulo to the council chamber where Mem'Tara and Ce'Aret were standing watch on Ven'Dar. “I told them what happened as best I could, and they said to come right back and tell you not to touch nor move anything, and not to let nobody come here. Wait for them, they said.”

The wait was not long. Ce'Aret arrived first. The old woman knelt alongside Karon and laid her hand on his forehead, closing her eyes. I could tell by her slow rocking when she began to grieve. After a while, she stood up and nodded her head to me. “The Prince's lady . . . here. Alive. Your presence tells me that the mysteries I feel and see are a more complex weaving of joy and sorrow than imagining can tell.” Her withered hand gently stroked Karon's hair. “It will take a very long time indeed to take in this sorrow.”

“Yes.” The world, the conversation, the stone, and the torchlight might have been illusion. I could not feel any of them.

“And the prisoner . . . the Fourth . . . lies dead as well . . .”

I nodded, and she shook her head sadly. “A Soul Weaver, the Prince told me. Corrupted before we could know him.” She paused for a while, as if to ponder her own assessment. “I've no wish to intrude on your grieving, lady, but as you well know, these events are of such significance to our world . . . and your own, as well . . . I must summon the others.”

I had no strength to explain that Gerick was innocent. What would it matter? “Do as you need. As long as I can stay with them for a while.”

She nodded, then took on the slightly vague expression of a Dar'Nethi who was speaking in someone else's mind. When she was finished, I asked her about Ven'Dar.

“He collapsed once the Prince left the council chamber,” she said. “He lives, but has not regained his senses. We continue to hope.”

A short time later, Mem'Tara swept into the room, followed by a hobbling Ustele. Once she'd paid her respects to Karon, Mem'Tara began to examine the room, from every finger's breadth of the walls and floor to the oily stain where the oculus, the mask, and the diamonds had vanished. Ce'Aret saw to old Ustele, who knelt hard-faced beside his son and grandson, laying his hand on the knife, perhaps to gain some understanding of the circumstances of its use. I believed it would tell him that Men'Thor had done the terrible deed, but I didn't think it would tell him why or the part he himself had played in it. Even if it did so, I wasn't sure that he would understand it. Who would mourn Men'Thor properly? Who would judge his place in Dar'Nethi history? Before very long, the old man shoved Ce'Aret aside and hobbled out of the room.

I watched all these activities with no more involvement than a star observing the actions of those of us who crept about on the world's surface—until Mem'Tara, examining Karon's body, reached out for the black pyramid. “No!” I said, surprised at the strength of my own voice. “Don't touch it.”

The dark-haired sorceress raised her eyebrows in question.

“I just—” It was too personal. Too intimate. As if she were reaching out for Karon's soul. I would not have him violated in such a way, even by someone wellintentioned. How could I explain it?
Follow the Way . . .
“Isn't it true that the dead should not be moved for several hours? Isn't that your custom?”

Mem'Tara nodded. “Why yes, that's usual. So that the soul will have crossed the Verges and will not need to find its way back to this life. I was only going to examine the device, but if it concerns you, I'll leave it for a while. But the Prince caused his own death. . . .”

Dar'Nethi history and custom were very clear. No Healer would attempt to revive one who had caused his own death, especially a soul who had been returned to life once before. And no Healer in all of Gondai would touch Gerick.