"Let's walk outdoors a while," my father said, after showing me the finely bound volumes in a half-empty bookshelf and the marvelous plumbing fixtures that piped water into a small, carved basin and emptied waste from an enclosed water closet into a series of channels underneath the hospice buildings. "I can't seem to get enough of the open air."
We set out through the formal gardens of thick shrubs and perfectly trimmed beds of flowers and herbs, and then turned onto a faint path that skirted the paddocks and led through the fringes of a stretch of woodland. Before any other conversation, he wanted to know about my mother. Only after he had wrung my brain inside out probing for every word she had spoken, every expression that had crossed her face and what I thought it might mean, did we move on to our investigation.
"I remember almost nothing about my first hours here. Candlelight… a blur of colorful candlelight. Kind words. A hard bed. She kept me swaddled in hot blankets and her enchantments … a blessing, I'll confess, but not so good for precise observation. And then, sometime around the second day, I believe, she and a man named Cedor brought me here and left me to sleep a great deal. I scarcely knew when I was awake and when I was asleep. Cedor brought my meals. He still does, and takes care of my linen and those sorts of things. But he doesn't act like a servant." He drew up his brow thoughtfully.
"A spy?" I said. Something had to be wrong about all this kindness and generosity.
"I don't think so. He's gentle, efficient, does his job, and makes no attempt at familiarity. But he's not . .. servile … in any way, either. He is well-spoken, clearly intelligent, and shows an exceptional command of complexities like the plumbing. His demeanor is more that of a physician or a tutor, yet he performs the most menial tasks with good grace."
"You'll need to be careful not to leave Mother's letters lying about."
"Perhaps. But I don't think Cedor's a spy. He's something else. I just don't know what."
"I'm to speak to the Lady before I go."
"She's very curious about you," he said. "She asked me where you live, what you do, how old you are. Does she suspect, do you think?"
"I don't think so. It's . . . When I saw her, I knew she'd lived in Zhev'Na. So that part of her story is certainly true. I think she knew the same about me."
We emerged from the woodland path, crossed a grassy lawn teeming with birds and butterflies, and wandered into an apple orchard. I had glimpsed a few other people walking in the gardens, but we had the woodland and the orchard to ourselves.
"And so you've slept in your apartments after all this enchanting?"
"Yesterday, I woke up in the morning as if I'd never been ill. You can't imagine. … I rose, washed, ate. Crept about like an infant just learning how to walk, waiting for the onslaught … a twinge . . . something. But it never came. For the first time in three months, I could take a full breath without feeling like my gut had a grinding wheel in it. Cedor found me giddy and confused, and kindly reassured me that I was not mad. I supposed they explained the rules of the house to you, as well."
"She told me. So you feel normal? Healthy?"
"I don't feel anything . It's so strange."
The path ended abruptly at the edge of the orchard. Beyond the straight line of the trees and across a short expanse of ankle-high grass stood the hospice wall, an unimposing strip of white stone no higher than my waist, stretching in both directions. I was ready to turn back, but my father walked on through the grass.
"Do you sense enchantment here?" he said, running his hand along the top of the wall, where octagonal bronze medallions the size of my palm, each engraved with a flower, bird, or beast, were embedded at intervals.
I brushed my hand on the smooth stone. The hairs on my arm prickled and stung uncomfortably, and I snatched my hand away. "Yes. It's colder than it should be. Active enchantment, certainly."
He shook his head. "I can't sense it. Yesterday afternoon when I was out walking, I climbed over the wall right there by that wild rose. Stupid thing to do. She had warned me. But after thinking of nothing but this wretched body for so long, to have no pain at all … I wondered if I was really dead and had just missed the whole thing! Well, I knew right away I wasn't dead. Clearly there is no reversal of disease while one resides here."
"Someone found you?" I hated the thought of him lying in the grass in such pain.
"Cedor. He says everyone tries it in their first days here, so he was keeping watch."
For a while we stood gazing across the grassy spread of the valley floor beyond the wall, threaded with streams, dotted with white clover, meadowsweet, and a few stubby hawthorns. Then we turned back and strolled through the apple, plum, and cherry trees, talking about nothing. Rather than returning the way we'd come, we wandered through sprawling vegetable gardens, encountering an occasional gardener who nodded or smiled as we passed. After a while, a cloud hanging over the distant mountains slid down across the valley and chased us inside with a drizzle of rain.
"How does she do it?" I asked, taking up the only topic of real importance as if we'd never left it.
My father had changed out of his wet robes into the more ordinary shirt and breeches I'd brought him and set about lighting a fire to chase the damp from my clothes. From the mantelpiece he took a small, lidded brass cylinder. A single living flame was visible through the perforated sides, and when he opened the cap and held the vessel next to his tinder, the flame leaped from the luminant and set the dry stuff ablaze.
"The Lady says she doesn't completely understand it herself, but that she has learned how to channel the power we 'residents' gather and bind it to her own, using it to shape the enchantments of the wall. She works the linking enchantment in our first days here. That's why we have no shred of power left for our own use. I can't so much as warm a cup of tea that's gone cold or light a fire." He said it lightly, but I knew that such incapacity was no trivial matter to a Dar'Nethi. "Cedor has to bring me this." He capped the luminant again and set it on the mantel.
"It's like Zhev'Na, then," I said.
He shook his head as if to banish that memory, even as his hand rubbed his neck where the scar of his slave collar was now revealed by his open-necked shirt. "No. Not so crippling as that. I can gather power in the way I'm accustomed. It just dwindles away as fast as it builds.
"Truly I feel no evil in the Lady, and the beauties of this place are undeniable. To walk, speak, and eat free of pain, to read, write, and think … I never appreciated those things enough. But everything seems . . . different. I can't grasp it. At least in Zhev'Na, I dreamed, but here, not once. Nothing."
He settled into a chair beside the fire and fell silent, staring into the flames. I didn't know what to say.
After a while, he glanced up at me. "One thing we must do each time you come: You must join with me, test me to see if I've changed somehow. My word won't be enough."
"Are you sure?" I hated the thought of intruding on him again. Possessing him. When I joined with a person in that way, no thoughts or feelings could be kept hidden from me. I tried not to pry, but some intrusion was unavoidable. "We don't even know if my ability will work here."
"Another good reason to do so. I know it's awkward. But you mustn't worry; I trust you." He smiled, and motioned me to come nearer the hearth. "Come along. You know I'm right, so get it over with."
We sat on a small couch. Closing my eyes, I gathered what power I had, willing my talent to rise, feeding it with power, and allowing it to swell up inside me until it felt as if my skin would split. Then came the unnerving separation of body and soul, the tearing loss as my detached senses failed, and the moment's disorientation as I abandoned my own body and slipped into my father's. My talent worked without difficulty, but I knew at once that all was not right with him.