The things I'd done, the things they made me do . . . I gave her a hand up, mounted my own horse, and followed her slowly down the path, wishing she would break the silence so I would have an easier time dismissing the vision of a Zhid warrior I'd lashed until his flesh spattered on my clothes, or the ones with blackened lips and swollen tongues who had died raving in the desert when I withheld their water to test their loyalty.
Neither of us spoke until we reached the bottom of the rift.
"You intrigue me, sir." Tilting her head to look at me, D'Sanya smiled, reigniting the joy and mischief in her eyes. Perhaps she'd been seeing visions, too. "You seem to take it in stride that I am ten centuries old, yet can best you in a horse race. I've met no one else who can do that. I'll have to learn more of you."
"Only if I may request the same privilege," I said, a vibrant warmth spreading like plague to my every bone and muscle. "And I can best anyone in a horse race except my friend Paulo—especially a woman of such advanced age."
I dug my knees into Nacre's flanks and took out across the meadow at a gallop, shouting wordlessly for no reason, relishing the smooth surge of muscled power beneath me and the stretch of thigh and back as I leaned into the wind, winning by surprise what I could never have won by plan. She took the jump over the last fence no more than a tail's length behind me. Flushed and laughing, she almost leaped off the stallion when I offered her my gloved hand.
"When will you return for a rematch?" she said.
"I'll be here every day for a while. I've thought to stay in Gaelie for several weeks so I can be with my father often … to be sure . . ."
"Will you see him before you leave today?"
"I planned to bid him good night."
From the direction of the main house, a tall gray man—Na'Cyd, the consiliar—hurried toward us, a Dulce at his side. "My lady, we have—"
D'Sanya held out a hand to stay him before he could reach us. She fixed her eyes on me, and I felt the blood racing to my face yet again. Her expression was never static, but shifted in subtle ways, soft, engaged, not smiling, yet pleased and filled with anticipation. If a man could grow wings and stand the first time on a cliff top, he could not feel such a mixture of promise and peril as I felt under D'Sanya's eye. "May I come with you? I'd like to become better acquainted with your father, I think. Would my intrusion disturb him?"
"Not in the least. He'll welcome it." Surely my father could do better than I in the matter of investigation.
The stableman took my horse, promising to have him ready to leave in half an hour. The impassive Na'Cyd stood beside a grape arbor, arms folded, watching as the Lady and I left the stableyard. We strolled through the golden light, across a wide lawn and through the steep angled shadows of courtyards and cloisters to my father's door.
"I've brought a lady to say good evening, Father," I called out as I tapped on his door and pushed it open wider. "I told her you wouldn't mind."
"Certainly not!" He was sitting in the chair by the far windows again and jumped up as we walked in.
"Your son does not grant you the same courtesy you gave him, sir," said the Lady, laughing, "but presumes to answer for you. I only wished—"
The Lady's words fell to the side like a dropped anvil when my father stepped into the evening glow from his windows, extended his palms, and bowed to her. Her hand flew to her throat.
"You were a slave." Her voice sounded dead, all gaiety fled in a instant's change.
My father looked puzzled, until his own hand touched the red scar from the slave collar glaring unmistakably above the loose neck of his shirt. "Yes," he said softly. "I was."
"I'm sorry," said D'Sanya, softly. "So sorry. I didn't know." Tears rolled down her pale cheeks, all the flush of the day's enjoyment vanished.
"What is it?" I said.
"Please forgive me. I just— I shouldn't intrude. Good night to you both." She nodded and hurried away, leaving us both staring after her.
I told my father briefly of our ride and our conversation, and we puzzled at her behavior. A great number of ex-slaves lived in Avonar. Surely the Lady had seen the scars before. She'd certainly seen the truer horror, the scars were benign beside the reality of slavery in Zhev'Na. By the time I needed to leave, we'd devised no likely explanation.
"Ride carefully, son."
I bade him good night and set out for the stable and the road to Gaelic.
When I reached the inn, Paulo was loitering about the fringes of the guesthouse's crowded common room, where almost the whole town had gathered to talk about disturbing news. "Another village attacked," he said after working his way across the crowded room to join me by the door. "They're thinking it looked like Zhid work. Do you think that's possible?"
I shrugged and threaded a path toward the stairs. I was here to help my father. Anything else was the responsibility of the Dar'Nethi.
"This time all the bodies were still there." He followed me up the stair. "It was crazy, looked like they'd done for each other: men fallen with their knives in each other's guts, women who'd smothered their children then slit their own throats . . ."
. . . hangings . . . houses burned with the occupants locked inside . . . murder between brothers . . . neighbors . . . husbands and wives . . . hatred and madness erupted into destruction and slaughter . I knew exactly what he described. I'd seen it. Powers of earth and sky forgive me, I'd caused such things to happen and then fed on the hatred, terror, and despair I'd caused, until my power was so monstrous I could melt rocks with a flick of my eyelash.
"What is it?" As we walked into our room, he took a breath and examined me. "You look like you've eaten something rotten."
"Nothing. Nothing I can help with."
I was not a Lord of Zhev'Na. Twice I had chosen to leave the Three and their gifts of power and immortality behind. My father and I had risked death to destroy them. The last strikes of failing Zhid were not my responsibility.
I dropped my packs on the floor. "Tomorrow I've got to go back to the hospice. See what this damnable woman is about, so we can go home." I had my own people, my own kingdom, to worry about.
"What do you want me to do?"
I undid the straps on the saddlepacks and pulled out a bundle of letters and a list my father had given me. "If you can force yourself to return to Mistress Aimee's house, take these letters to my mother and give the list to Bareil. Ven'Dar said he would send Bareil back to Windham to retrieve anything my father needed, and this list describes where he can find all my father's notes on Dar'Nethi history. He said that as long as he wasn't dying, he might as well have something to do."
Paulo knew exactly what all of this meant for my father, how he would prefer to be dying than to be sitting in D'Sanya's house neither dead nor alive. Yet, the thought of him gone . . . "Shit."
Exactly.
Darkness had fallen as I rode down Grithna Vale toward Gaelie, but it wasn't as dark as my dreams that night. As I suspected might happen, they took me back to Zhev'Na, deep into the heart of the horror I had lived. When gray dawn woke me the next morning, the last voice to fade was Lord Ziddari's, repeating the farewell he'd whispered as I left him beyond the Verges: "Heed my last word, Destroyer. You will never be free of us. No matter in what realm we exist at the end of this day, you will not escape the destiny we designed for you. You are our instrument. Our Fourth. Every human soul—mundane or Dar'Nethi—will curse the day you first drew breath."
Chapter 7