"We're as happy to be in one piece as you are to find us that way," I said, wondering how she had known our identities before we had spoken. We joined her, and she threw her arms around me and kissed me on each cheek, before turning and extending her palms to Gerick. Paulo took a position close to her right shoulder. It would take another earthquake to budge him.
Gerick returned her gesture of greeting. "Mistress."
She bent her head toward him as gracefully as if he had kissed her hand.
Ven'Dar motioned us to take our seats beside Aimee. He himself remained standing. "We need to hear your story from the beginning, Gerick," he said. "Every detail. It's the only way we'll be able to judge you fairly."
Gerick nodded, and as soon as we were settled, he closed his eyes for a moment, as if to compose his thoughts. Then he looked up at the Preceptors. "If I'm to start at the beginning, then we must go very far back indeed. For this cannot be merely a recounting of my own deeds—or crimes, as many of you consider them— but the story of my family. It begins with a king who was a card cheat and a gambler, who loved his family only slightly less than he loved his marvelous kingdom, and it tells of his three children, and his beloved cousin who is my own ancestor, and the three sorcerers who defied his wisdom, to their own ruin and his and very nearly to ours . . ."
He assembled the pieces—D'Arnath and the Bridge, D'Sanya and her tragic coming to power, the horror of her captivity in Zhev'Na, and her father's desperate attempt to salvage his terrible mistake—and laid them in a magical pattern like the tiles and silver bars of a sonquey game. And then he spoke of his own childhood, and his own dreadful coming of age, and the blight of memory he had retained long after his mentors had vanished beyond the Verges. And he spoke frankly and clearly of his guilt and his doubts and what he considered to be his failure in uncovering D'Sanya's madness. ". . . When my father and Prince Ven'Dar asked me to investigate the Lady D'Sanya, the last thing I expected was that I would grow to love her—or rather, the image that I made of her. I feared the seductions of my past, the power I did not fully understand, the memories I had inherited, but the true danger lay in a direction I had no capacity to imagine . . ."
For hours he spoke, softly, telling his tale without averting his eyes. The Preceptors questioned him intensely, often brutally, but never once did this most private of souls bristle or withdraw or attempt to hide his own culpability. ". . . Yes, I knew Dar'Nethi would die in the assault, but I was not strong enough—no one was strong enough—to face D'Sanya alone … I had to get to the Bridge and break the link, and I believed the Dar'Nethi would slay me before I could do so . . . and that was before I knew that she was, herself, the link. Yes, I was tempted to take power for myself … I chose not. Yes, I fully intended for the Zhid to destroy the Bridge if I failed. If they were capable of doing it at all, then they would, at the same time, destroy their own connection to each other—the avantir. Then perhaps one of you could have picked up the pieces and made the worlds live again … I hoped . . ."
As Gerick spoke, scenes flashed through my head in vivid display, people and places and torments excruciatingly real and complete, far beyond his unadorned words. Only when he paused could I shake my head clear of them, feeling foolish at my presumption that I could envision the past through his eyes. Exhaustion had made me silly, for I'd even seen myself—and in a way no mirror could ever show me. Neither foolish, cowardly, nor awkward. Yes, I had a good mind, and I knew how to put two words together to make some sense of matters. But admirable? Insightful? Beautiful? I slumped in my chair and covered my face with my hand, attempting to smother my snickering before someone noticed and read my thoughts. Mind-speaking, limited for so long to only a few of us . . . Ven'Dar hinted that it might be revived in this new world. An uncomfortable consideration when one had thoughts too ludicrous to see daylight.
Aimee's chair was slightly behind my own, so that when I noticed Ven'Dar nodding at her I turned to look. Her hands were raised and held flat in the air a short distance from her temples, a look of exquisite concentration on her face. Aimee the Imager. So, what I had envisioned was her image, drawn from Gerick's words and the knowledge and belief underlying them. . . .
"Mistress Jen!" Ven'Dar. His voice rang sharp and impatient on the ancient stones.
A cold sweat signaled my guilty panic that he had done exactly the thought-reading I feared.
"Would you please give your testimony now?"
"Sorry . . ." Concentrate, Jen . As I recounted what I had seen from the moment Gerick had spilled my raspberries in the hospice corridor until I found him slumped beside the crystal wall, a clerk brought us wine. I was pleased because I could focus my eyes on my cup and keep Aimee's images out of my head. Knowing what she was doing made me feel awkward, and I worried that certain muddled thoughts that had no bearing on the case might show up in her work. But no one gaped or snickered, and a sideways glance told me that Gerick was gazing at the floor, expressionless, his mouth buried in one hand.
As most of my tale merely confirmed Gerick's account, the Preceptors had few questions for me. Only a bit about my years in Zhev'Na, and how I could possibly allow someone I feared and loathed to crawl inside my soul.
"By that time I trusted him," I said, impatient with their insistent skepticism. "I can't explain more than that. He didn't trick me, and I'm not entirely an idiot. His testimony is true and complete. You can believe him."
"We thank you for your testimony, Speaker," said Preceptor Mem'Tara, bowing her head quite formally. "The value of your judgment of truth cannot be measured."
"I'm not— I've no such talent. I've no talent at all. I'm a Speaker's daughter !" I stammered and fumbled. Were they trying to humiliate me? Or had I somehow misled them? To impersonate a Speaker was very serious. In such a matter as this, it would be considered criminal.
But they had already begun questioning Paulo. And soon they turned back to Gerick, probing to understand the results of what he'd done.
"I remember nothing beyond what I've described," he said. "I saw images … my family … my friends . . . my homelands . . . and I tried to help them endure what was happening, to survive. I knew the Bridge was gone, as I didn't feel the disharmony any longer. I also couldn't feel anything under my feet. And then .. . nothing. I can't tell you more than that. I just don't know."
The proceedings were abruptly adjourned to the Chamber of the Gate. My good intentions of setting my credentials, or lack of them, straight fell by the wayside as we gazed in awe upon the crystal wall, even I who had seen it before. The wall pulsed and gleamed with light, as if it had captured every handlight cast since the world was young.
"I didn't create this," Gerick said, as he walked up and down beside it, the glow illuminating his wonder. "I've never made anything like this … so beautiful."
"The Lady says you carried her through it," said Ven'Dar.
"I don't remember that. Is she—?"
"We've taken her away to be cared for. She cannot tell us anything more for the time being."
A scrawny, odd-looking man with thinning hair had been in the chamber when we arrived. Wearing a ragged, dirty robe that had once been yellow, he sat on the floor between two protruding faces of the wall, gazing intently into the smooth surface. It seemed odd that neither Ven'Dar nor the Preceptors acknowledged him. They just carried on with Gerick's interrogation. I wondered if I should mention his presence, in case I was the only one who'd noticed him.