I downed the rest of the saffria. Fully awake now, I was ready to do almost anything to get the matter of the mysterious D'Sanya over quickly. The sight of my mother resting her head on my father's pillow made me hate Healers who had no remedies for disease, hate the Dar'Nethi who complicated everything with their self-righteous bickering over their Bridge and their throne, and hate myself for being unable to help my father in any meaningful way and for grudging him this single task that he had set me. Last night had been wretched for several reasons.
Sounds of doors and voices pulled me to my feet. My mother kissed my father's brow, waking him gently with whispered words I tried not to overhear. We all recognized the fact that he was unlikely to survive this venture. Soon, much too soon for my mother, Aimee poked her head through the door to the side-chamber. "My lady, this way, quickly."
My mother was to watch our meeting through a myscal, a Dar'Nethi mirror device that could show her what was happening without her being seen. We had deemed it too risky to expose her as my father's wife when one touch on her shoulder and a simple probe of sorcery would reveal that she was not Dar'Nethi. Everyone in Avonar knew of Prince D'Natheil's remarkable wife from the other world. Our venture would be ended quickly if the Lady guessed our identity. A corrupt princess was not going to reveal the truth to the man who had destroyed the Lords, and an innocent princess was not going to reveal truth to a man who had been one of them.
With a last touch of my father's hand and a kiss on my forehead, my mother hurried out of the room. The door shut softly behind her. Then the Lady D'Sanya, purportedly the daughter of a king a thousand years dead, walked into Aimee's house and eclipsed every thought, every plan, and every caution in my head.
She was every bit of my own height, slender and graceful as a dancer. The planes of her cheek and her jaw were fine and delicate, shaping the light as if its source lay within her. Her dark blue gown, close fitting and banded high at the neck, revealed nothing and everything of round breasts and long, slender throat. Her hands clasped a heavy silver pendant that hung between her breasts, yet my eyes did not linger even in so enticing a place, for a pale corona of hair illuminated the most remarkable eyes the worlds had ever produced. They were the sapphire blue of a northern Vallorean lake where the icy water was deeper than the bowl of the sky, yet so clear one could see the gentle movements of the mosses among the smooth rocks at the bottom. She did not smile as she entered my father's room on T'Laven's arm, but swept us all into the sympathetic embrace of those shining eyes . . . and left me breathless and gaping like a fool.
"With blessings of life, I greet you all," she said, in a voice as clear as a snowmelt brook in the highlands. "Gentle lady, good sir, and you, sir . . ." She opened her palms and nodded her head to Aimee, to my father, and then to me.
Despite my every instinct and intention, I could not break the lock her eyes set upon my own. It might have been an hour I stared, discovering nothing I had expected to find in a mysterious Dar'Nethi woman come from Zhev'Na. I had steeled myself to see the Lords' mark on her, the touch of lurid amethyst, emerald, or ruby lurking behind a golden mask, the hint of dark steel behind her soft words, the faint stench of corruption tainting her presence. But all I saw was kindness and wisdom so painfully won I believed I already knew the stories she could tell if ever she could bring herself to speak them. She broke our gaze first, shifting her attentions back to my father, who lay huddled on his bed, fully awake now and quivering with the effort of not screaming with each breath.
The Lady knelt gracefully on the floor beside him, and, after a brief hesitation—perhaps asking his permission without words—laid one hand on her breast and one on his forehead. If enchantment could ever be visible to the eye, then I saw her lay her magic around him like blessed armor against the assault of his ravening disease. His tremors eased, and in a shaking whisper, he said, "With blessings of life, Lady . . ."
She pressed a finger to her ups. "The good T'Laven tells me of your state, Master . . . K'Nor?" My father nodded at the false name we had chosen. "And of your belief that your fife's work is incomplete. He has told you of my offer and the conditions of it? I cannot cure this illness. If you leave the hospice, it will come full upon you again with all its mortal consequence. And while you stay with me, you will have no power of sorcery."
"I'll confess . . . that's difficult. But I cannot … go
on "
"You have discussed this with your family? Their support is very important."
"My son has accepted my judgment. There is no one else."
"I wish I could offer more. But time and peace are yours if you wish them. Life awaits you."
"Can it be soon? Please, Lady . . ." As he had planned, his desperation was no sham.
"Give me your hand, sir. Your son may come to you five days hence, once you are settled." Though speaking to my father, she nodded at me. "Thereafter he may come whenever he wishes for as long as you stay in my house."
As if lifted from his bed by her slender hand alone, my father rose and stood by the Lady, then stepped with her through the shimmering portal that appeared in the center of the room. As he and the Lady D'Sanya vanished from the room, his voice lingered in my mind. Until we say enough .
Until then, Father , I said, staring like a mindless idiot at the spot where the portal had closed in upon itself.
As Aimee and T'Laven hurried off to inform Ven'Dar, my mother returned from the next room. Arms folded, she stood by the tall windows and glared at the bright, empty morning in Aimee's garden. "I expected a demon," she said after a long silence. "A hag, at least, that I could hate respectably."
"She looks younger than Aimee." Trivia .. . while my mind was reeling. Of course her appearance didn't matter. What I saw, what I felt didn't matter.
"How will you begin?"
The very question I'd been asking myself. I had been so sure I would recognize corruption. I would report it to my father and the prince, and then I could run away again and bury myself where I didn't have to think of the past. But all of that changed when I saw her. The Lady D'Sanya had come from Zhev'Na; that part of her story was true. Her eyes had told me. And because of that I could not trust her. But if she was evil, then never had evil been wrapped in such marvels.
"I'm going to tell her I was raised in Zhev'Na."
My mother spun about, her hair glinting in the early sunlight. "Is that wise? I thought you were going to keep it secret, to try to catch her in some knowledge she shouldn't have."
"I think she already knows," I said. "Just as I would have known she had been there even if I'd never heard her story. I won't tell her all of it, just that I was taken like other Dar'Nethi children, and lived there until I was rescued. As long as no one recognizes Father or me, she won't know everything . . . unless she is even more powerful than Ven'Dar says, in which case none of this makes any difference."
"Walk carefully, love. I need you a while longer." As always, my mother's trust eased my lingering doubts. She took my arm, and we left the empty sickroom behind, walking down the winding passageways of Aimee's house in search of Paulo and breakfast.
Chapter 5
I left Avonar in the early afternoon four days after my father's departure. My mother had already written ten letters for me to take to him, and filled my saddlepacks with warm shirts, books, and pastries and tea my father especially liked. She had wandered through our rooms in Aimee's house all that morning, picking up this and that—a pen, a magnifying lens, a small sewn pillow filled with grain that Kellea had been able to warm with sorcery and then tuck in the bed with him to soothe the persistent ache in his back—asking if I thought he would want the things now he would be able to sit up and to walk. Before I could answer, she would throw the object down again in frustration.