For three days running, I rode the two hours up Grithna Vale to D'Sanya's hospice, spent the day with my father, then rode the two hours back to Gaelie without so much as a glimpse of the Lady. My father saw her only rarely and discovered nothing we didn't know already: She was beautiful, kind, powerful, generous, discreet, charming. He felt no further change in his own condition, and I detected none. He was numb, and our investigation was going nowhere.
In Gaelie I tried talking to the proprietor of the guesthouse, but the granite-faced Mistress A'Diana could tell me nothing but that those who brought their kin to the hospice were the happier for it. Who wouldn't be, she said, to have a loved one living free of pain and disease when it was thought all hope was past? No, she'd never heard of anyone wanting to leave the hospice once they'd lived there, nor anyone who'd thought they'd made a mistake to send their friends or kin to the Lady. No, she'd never spoken to the Lady, only seen her kindness, and now would I get on with my own business for she, the innkeeper, had a full house of linens to wash.
Every evening that Paulo was gone I spent alone in the common room feeling awkward and useless. The same people were there every day: the parties of Tree Delvers from the Wastes, the two Gardeners, brothers it appeared, who stopped in for supper every night, and the dark-haired youth hunched over his table alone in the corner by the stair. The young man and wife sought endless consultations with endless streams of people over their painted cards—something about the prospects of talents in an expected child.
Inheritance was a magical thing to the Dar'Nethi. Adoption, disinheritance, and mentoring could influence a child's magical abilities as decisively as blood relationships. That's why my father's revival in D'Natheil's body, had made me the prospective Heir of D'Arnath with all the power and control such descent implied, even though I was not born of D'Arnath's blood.
Paulo returned in three days, riding in after I'd completed yet another fruitless venture up the Vale. On the next morning I was able to take my father a stack of books and notes from the writing he'd abandoned when he'd fallen ill and another bundle of letters from my mother. She must be doing nothing but writing letters.
"Perhaps now I can think about something other than the state of my belly," said my father as I pulled the bundles of journals and papers from the bags and dropped them on his table. "Constant self-examination is unutterably boring, whether the result is pleasing or otherwise. At least when I was ill I had people fussing over me."
As before, his first activity was to read my mother's letters, the first of many readings, I guessed. He sat in his chair and broke the seals one after the other. I tied up my empty bags and poured myself a glass of wine.
"Your mother's not happy being cooped up at Gar'-Dena's house," he said, waving the current missive at me, his spirits noticeably improved. "Ven'Dar doesn't think she should be seen about the city, in case anyone should recognize her or get too curious about Aimee's guest. But she's already wheedled Aimee into taking her to hear a Singer who comes to Avonar next week."
"Mistress Aimee doesn't have a chance," I said, sitting on one of the hard chairs beside his eating table and propping my boots on the other one. "She's too nice."
"I don't know. Maybe the girl has more grit than we know. Your mother's been trying to find out her feelings about Je'Reint. She says that the cook is certain that Aimee has an understanding with Je'Reint and that they're just waiting to announce it until 'the matter of the succession is settled.' But Seri can't get Aimee to reveal anything, and it's about to drive her mad. She writes: 'The girl just blushes and says Je'Reint is a noble gentleman whose Way will lead him to great honor, even if he is not to be Heir .' Poor Paulo."
"Better not tell him. If he gets any lower about Mistress Aimee, he'll have to reach up to shoe his horse." I wanted to shake the woman. "If she could just see him . . ."
"I think she sees better than people credit," said my father. "But she's young and generous, and believes she should offer her best to everyone, no matter her personal feelings. And she must be conscious of her position, the daughter of powerful family. For a Dar'Nethi to consider an attachment outside her—"
"To a mundane , you mean. A fellow with no power, who can't read, and who'd be happy living in a stable, but who just happens to have the best heart."
"You don't have to convince me, Gerick! It's just something she has to consider, assuming she is considering any attachment at all. You know, I don't claim to understand much of anything about women. Your mother has been challenge enough for one lifetime. Or three for that matter."
A light meal of roast chicken and long peas was laid out on a sideboard, and I helped myself as he went back to his letters, smiling to himself as he read. Then he picked up a page written in a different hand. This one was clearly not so entertaining.
"Ven'Dar writes of another raid in the north. He says that witnesses saw Zhid riding toward the mountains afterward." He looked up, frowning. "The rumor of a mountain stronghold has been repeated for years. If we could only find it . . ."
My father spent the next hour talking about Ven'Dar's news, examining a map of Gondai we pulled from the bookcase, marking the locations of the recent attacks, and speculating on the location of the Zhid headquarters and what could be motivating their actions. Their duty, their desire, the function infused in them from the time they were made Zhid, was to serve the Lords' wishes. I could not imagine them anything but half crazed with loss.
"Perhaps they just can't believe the Lords are gone," said my father. Ven'Dar's half-unfolded letter lay between a basket of leftover bread and a pewter salt dish that held the crumbled bits of wax I had picked off the paper. "They obey the last commands they were given because they don't know how to do anything else. Of course, that doesn't explain the period of quiet and why they are revived at this particular time. You didn't hear of any mountain—"
"I saw only the desert camps and spent time . .. trained … in only one of those. I never went into the mountains. Never heard them talk about secret encampments. Please, could we could talk of something else now?" I hated thinking of these things.
He leaned back in his chair and tossed a book onto the stack of maps and papers, looking at me far too closely. "Ah, Gerick, I've always believed that a great deal of this burden you carry is not related to your own past. Somehow, when you were joined with the Three, you took on responsibility for their deeds as well. If only you could touch their actual memories, make use of them to unravel these mysteries, that might make your pain worth something at least."
My fingers played with the edge of his map, rolling it tightly across one corner. I clamped my lips shut and kept my eyes on the paper, waves of heat and chill and nausea leaving my skin clammy.
My father leaned forward and laid a hand on mine "Gerick, what is it?"
"Don't ask it. Please don't."
He blew a long slow breath of realization. "You can touch the Lords' memories . . . earth and sky . . . all of them?"
"I tried it that night when Ven'Dar first told us about the Lady . . . when you were so ill . . . to see if I could retrieve some memory of her and avoid all this. Certainly in the few hours I was joined with them, the Lords weren't thinking of her. But I couldn't make myself dig any deeper into their past. You know the risk if I think about that life too much."
To delve too deeply into unhealthy memories, to touch the kind of power I'd had, could waken desires that should stay buried—like digging through a charnel pit and remembering how much you enjoy the foulness, the stink, and the cold heaviness of the dead. And though I chose not to nurture and exploit the talent born in me, I knew I was no weakling child even without my three partners.