Ven'Dar answered first. "Of course, you should be free to go. We've had enough for now."
The Preceptors had not embraced Gerick, but somewhere along the way, they had come to believe in him. Since we had come to the Chamber, they had spoken nothing of punishments or prison, only of study and investigation. The four agreed that Gerick could go, two of them somewhat reluctantly, but they insisted he return to Avonar as soon as possible and work with Garvй and others to determine what this new order might mean. "You have much to answer for," L'Beres pronounced.
Gerick would have agreed to anything to be gone. Even the brief delay as Ven'Dar shut down the portal to the palace and rebuilt one to the hospice had him grinding his teeth. But as he stepped to the threshold, he turned back and extended his hand. "Jen'Larie, would you … ?"
"They don't need me here," I said. Even if he had stayed in Avonar, it was time for me to go. I'd been away from my father long enough. I turned to Ven'Dar.
The former prince—whom I suspected would be our prince again—tipped his head toward the portal. "Your service has been incalculable, Jen, both in your testimony and in deep and abiding ways that no story of these days will ever report. Go. Do as you need. And believe."
The night was warm and still as Gerick and I stepped out of the portal at the main house of the hospice, just in front of the porch where D'Sanya had greeted her guests in her filmy white gowns. As we ran up the steps and through the deserted passages, I wondered, unworthily, if Gerick would ever be rid of the image of her. Of course, his thoughts were elsewhere now. The sound of women singing hung on the air as we cut through the unlit library and through the upper courtyard gardens, down the few steps past the fountains and rose arbors, and into the lower gardens. One glance, and I knew he was too late.
The lower garden was a sea of white lights, the small round handlights that Dar'Nethi used in funeral processions. Fifty people or more stood amid the overgrown roses and graceful willows. The men joined the singing with a countermelody. The Song of the Way , intertwined melodies of grief and joy, was always sung to celebrate the passing of the Heirs of D'Arnath.
Na'Cyd stood well apart from the crowd, on the steps near the fountain that marked the lower garden. He neither cast a handlight nor did he sing. But he bowed wordlessly to us and led us through the mass of people, parting them briskly with his hand.
Prince D'Natheil lay still on the soft grass, his blue robes gracefully arranged, peace on his handsome features. Lady Seriana sat beside him, holding his hand to her forehead. One might have thought them a Sculptor's creation, set in that garden to remind us of love and mortality.
I hung back as Gerick hurried across the circle of mourners to his parents. As he knelt and laid his forehead on his father's breast, I scanned the faces in the crowd, missing the one I needed most to see. I turned quickly.
"He remains in his apartment," said Na'Cyd, his eyes fixed on the three in the grass.
I sped through the gardens and courtyards, suddenly unable to move fast enough to get there. No lights burned in either garden or residence as I slipped through Papa's door. His breathing, quick and shallow to manage his pain, led me to the open window where he sat in the dark, crooked and bent. The glorious song drifted on the cool air like a promise of spring, though my heart ached with all the griefs of winter. What was happening to me? I said nothing as I knelt in front of him, laid my head in his lap, and let his hand on my ugly hair Speak to me of love.
One year from the day my father died, my mother stood before two hundred scholars in the history lecture hall at the University in Valleor wearing the billowing black robe and blue sash of an Honorary Lecturer in Ancient History. With the strong, clear voice of a woman of intellect, education, and experience, and with an intensity that demanded every mind in the room open and every ear hear, she spoke of an extraordinary event in the history of the Four Realms—the day four hundred and seventy years in the past when the King of Leire, one Bosgard by name, had issued a decree that every member of a single race was to be exterminated. They were to be hunted down and burned to death, their lands and fortunes forfeit, their homes laid waste, their names forever obliterated from the councils of the land. Any man or woman who consorted with members of the condemned race or failed to report them was likewise condemned.
By the grace of His Majesty, Evard, the late King of Leire, had this decree been lifted, and at the command of Her Majesty Roxanne, Queen of Leire, had one Karon yn Mandille, a historian, archeologist, and physician of Valleor been required to prepare a history of the decree of extermination, its origins, and its results. On this day, said my mother, she would present the first of twenty-six lectures on the work he had completed before his death.
For two hours, she held the room spellbound in the grip of her story—my father's story—my story—and she had scarcely even begun. When she closed her notes and said, "Until next week," the room erupted into the chaos of excitement and discovery. From every side came questions, demands for more time, more words, more of the truth they had never even suspected.
She remained an island of serenity in the center of the storm, patiently telling them to come back and hear more. They would hear the truth of a universe that was larger than they had ever imagined. They would understand.
Throughout all of this, I sat on the back row of the lecture hall and watched as the circle of admirers and skeptics drifted away, still chattering and murmuring. My mother's eyes roved the empty chairs until they landed on me, not surprised in the least to see me there, though I'd not told her I was coming and had not seen her for almost half a year.
Her smile banished the shadows. "What questions would my students have had if they'd known the King of the Bounded, the most powerful sorcerer in three worlds, was sitting in the hall?"
"A small wonder beside the first woman ever to give a lecture at this University," I said. "Someday we may have a university in the Bounded, and I needed to know if a woman could teach men anything."
She laughed. "This is all your doing, isn't it? How else could Roxanne have known to command the Chancellor to allow it? For me to stand here . .." She waved toward the vaulted ceiling and the tall windows of colored glass, to the ancient lectern, and to the rows of seats where every scholar of the Four Realms had sat at one time or another. Where my father had once sat.
"I only mentioned it to her. It wasn't my idea." I strolled down the long flight of steps, the stone worn into concavity by the generations of students who had trod them, each step a little too wide to take in one stride, a little too shallow to require two. "But I had to be here. I was asked to give you something when this day came."
Into my mother's hands I placed the long, thin parcel I'd brought with me, wrapped in green silk and tied with a green velvet ribbon. For one instant her cheeks lost their flush of exhilaration, but as she unwrapped the parcel, her graceful fingers ever so slightly trembling, her soft smile drew the sweet coloring back again. The dew-drops on the soft petals that were just on the verge of opening seemed a reflection of the tears in her eyes.
But her tears did not fall. Rather she inhaled the scent of the flower and glowed with happiness. "He still cheats death," she said after a moment, laying her hand on my cheek. "To see you is to see his best self. He lives."
I had only begun to understand the magic that could create a rose of such glorious perfection and lasting beauty. This one had lived a year already. My father had designed it to bloom fresh and fragrant at my mother's bedside, the first thing she saw in the morning, and the last thing she saw at night, for as long as she drew breath.