He circled between me and the Gate fire as if to see what I might be hiding behind my back. I shifted my position as well. Only a fool would allow Ven'Dar at his back.
"I should slay you here and now," he said, as if he'd heard no word I'd spoken. "The Fourth Lord. The Destroyer. Since the beginning I have relied on your parents' testimony as to your motives and objectives, your feelings, your character, all these things you keep so tightly reined. But what if we've all been wrong about you? The immortal Lords can bide their time to take us down paths of seeming truth. Look at you! Look at what you've done! Do you even know what you are?"
And of course his question pricked my own remaining doubt. All this—the Lady and her folly, my father's illness, the necessity of war—had proceeded with an aura of inevitability, and now I stood at the Bridge with the fate of Avonar in my hands. After strenuously avoiding power and memory for nine years, I had slipped quite easily into this role, the very role designed for me when I was ten years old. You are our instrument. . .
For that moment, a chasm yawned beneath my feet, revealing a bottomless night where the deceptions of reason and intent formed in the light would be stripped away, yielding to a more fundamental . . . and less welcome . . . truth. But then another spasm wrenched my back and shoulder, sending jolts of pain down my spine—D'Sanya's poison. I was certainly not immortal.
I had relinquished that along with all the rest of the Lords' gifts.
"You've not misjudged me, Ven'Dar," I said, clenching my jaw so as not to reveal my vulnerability. "I still choose the light. Every day, every hour is a new choice, and sometimes the choice is easy and sometimes it involves more pain than seems bearable. But since the day I followed my father out of Zhev'Na, I have denied the Lords, and if a man cannot determine his fate by his own choice, then what hope is there for any of us? Believe what I say about D'Sanya and the Bridge, or cast your winding and let us decide the matter that way. But by all that you value, do it quickly."
Ven'Dar paused in his circling, the graying fire of the Gate behind him. His presence was enormous and dangerous—righteous anger and royal authority and the power of a Word Winder of prodigious capacity and talent. I felt his indecision. How could I blame him, when I fought this incessant battle with my own doubts? His fingers twitched. I raised an enchantment ready to flatten him.
"Speak your name!" The clear command halted the gathering violence. A small person to so fill a room, like a skittish bird who fluttered between walls and ceiling and the two of us, shoving aside doubts and uncertainties with her pointed chin.
I almost smiled as I answered. "My name is Gerick yn Karon, known in my own land as the Bounded King."
Jen jerked her head, as if she had expected nothing else. "Now speak the name of your master."
This, too, was easy. "In the world of the Bounded, I am sovereign, with right and honor and the service of my people as my guidestones. In my birthplace of Leire, my sovereign mistress is Roxanne, queen, ally, and friend. In the world of Gondai, my only master is the rightful ruler of Avonar, the Heir of D'Arnath—at present the Princess D'Sanya, whose ill judgment and scarred mind are hurling us all to ruin. As her loyal subject, I must prevent her from destroying this realm she loves so desperately. Everything—everything—I have done these few days, whether vile or foolish or praiseworthy, is to serve that end. On my father's life and my mother's spirit, I swear it."
Jen looked supremely satisfied. She would be most annoyed when I told her that only Zhid and slaves were bound to truth in answer to those questions. The Lords' memories had taught me that they/I could ignore even the binding of names and heart's loyalties. But the clarity she demanded seemed sufficient to serve the moment. Though he did not soften his grim visage or move from his position, Ven'Dar lowered his hands.
Jen stepped between Ven'Dar and me, grabbing my hands without regard to the flames dancing on my knuckles. "But, as it happens, D'Sanya is not the rightful Heir," she said.
I quenched my enchantment before setting her skin or clothes afire, and she proceeded to pour out the news my mother had given her.
"Listen to the exact words," she said. "Truth is power, Gerick, and you'll hear it. This is the writing of Mu'-Tenni the Speaker, bound to Truth, in the matter of King D'Arnath's girl child: After the Catastrophe made grim the days, the King's favor rested upon his youngest heir . . ." She recited the damning passage, fixing the words in my mind as if she had scribed them on my skull.
The puzzle rearranged itself again. D'Sanya's power was linked to the Bridge, not by an artifact, not by some shaped enchantment of her design, but by the very structure of the Bridge. D'Arnath had disowned her to prevent her corruption from damaging his creation, but the Dar'Nethi, as hungry for redemption and healing as D'Sanya herself, had anointed her anyway . . . had brought her back into D'Arnath's family and undone her father's warding.
Existing in the giant statues under the cold stars of our temple, reveling in the ponderous weight of power, I/we contemplated our enemy . . . Unsearched-for memories floated out of the past. "We will degrade thy innocent. . . use her talents . . . break her . . . destroy her . . . We
shall unmake her and remake her in our image, our daughter, not thine. Woe and ruin will be thine only grandchildren . …"
I remembered: I/we had corrupted her power and twisted her heart with death and despair so that everything she touched might service our desires. When I had embraced the Lords' memories at the hospice, I had examined the past and confirmed that it was only D'Sanya's enchantments, her metalworking, her loving that we had tainted. But we hadn't known about her link to the Bridge. D'Arnath had kept that dreadful secret well; surely no accident of battle had destroyed the Royal Library. Throughout this thousand years of war, the seed of our triumph lay buried under our fortress, growing, blossoming, bearing its wicked fruit, given life by the Tormentor King himself. All we'd had to do was keep his corrupted child alive to reap the harvest of his folly. We had done it for our own reasons, but had accomplished more than we ever understood.
"We'll go after her," said Ven'Dar, facing the steadily darkening fire. "I can still protect us. We'll bring her off the Bridge, assess the damage. Once the Preceptors decide the succession, the new Heir can set out to repair it. But you must stop the assault first, Gerick. No one will believe you. I cannot believe you—even after your declaration—if Zhid under your command are killing Dar'Nethi and destroying this city."
I looked up at him as if he existed in a different world … as he did, in a way . . . the world of past belief. Everything was changed now, made clear by this new information. Ven'Dar, the most perceptive sorcerer in Gondai, didn't feel the danger. Didn't see that it was far too late for Preceptors and judgments and repairs.
Once upon another day, Ven'Dar had told my father how sorely the Dar'Nethi were diminished since the time of D'Arnath. The goal of Ven'Dar's reign, of his generous heart and talented hands, had been to return his people to their glory. But the deterioration of the Dar'Nethi that had begun in D'Arnath's time had never truly been reversed. And since D'Sanya's arrival and accession, it had accelerated. Five years ago Ven'Dar had been able to read my truth for himself, had witnessed and understood what my father and I had done to destroy the Lords. Now he couldn't even perceive that his mistrust, his difficulties with power, his flawed enchantments, and his inability to reverse the disharmony and prejudices among his people were not temporary aberrations, but signs of his own corruption … as they were signs of a pervasive, fundamental corruption in the world.