"I trust you, Gerick, no matter what the circumstance." My father squeezed my arm and shook it gently, as if to wake me. "You have chosen the right in circumstances far more difficult than examining sordid memory. But the Preceptors and their Geographers and Imagers can pinpoint the source of these raiders far better than we've done here, and for the present the purposes and timing of the Zhid are matters of curiosity, not safety."
For the present. But if they were to find out the Zhid were rising again … if they needed to know where the legions lurked or how the warriors could function without the Three, and they came to me . . . "I'm sorry, Father. I just can't—"
A knock on the door interrupted us just then. A stocky, light-haired Dar'Nethi entered at my father's invitation, and with a quiet voice and a pleasant manner asked if we had finished our meal.
"Yes. We're quite fine, Cedor," said my father. "Thank you, as always."
"My pleasure as always, Master K'Nor," he said, sounding as if he meant it.
Once the man was gone, my father pulled out a chessboard and a rectangular wooden box. As he placed chess pieces of green agate on the board, he cocked his head thoughtfully toward the door through which the man had just exited. "I've at last unraveled the mystery of Cedor. Now why do you think a man who once taught natural history to the children of Avonar spends his days supplying meals and clean linen to a resident of this hospice?"
I shrugged and reached for a handful of the white pieces, happy we had changed the subject. "No idea."
"He was Zhid. For some two hundred years. I asked him about the pendant he wears about his neck—a little brass lion. He said it was a symbol of D'Arnath that Lady D'Sanya gave him when she restored his soul. Evidently quite a number of the Restored work here."
"Former Zhid here? Is that safe?" Of course, no external marks identified those who had once been Zhid. I had just never considered that any of them might be so close. My neck bristled at the thought.
"Quite safe, I think. Cedor was captured in the southern Wastes, nowhere near where I was held. And I've no contact with anyone else on the hospice staff. You don't think—" He looked at me as if he'd forgotten until that moment who I was. "No, no. Even if they could remember anything of their years as Zhid, they would remember you as a child, not a man. Nine years it's been."
Most Zhid were Dar'Nethi who had lost their souls as a result of the original Catastrophe or in the early centuries of the war, as the Lords drove more and more of Gondai into ruin. Others had been transformed as the Lords perfected their Seeking, an enchantment that could creep through the countryside and even across the walls of Avonar to capture a person's mind. Few of them had been given any choice in the matter. Only when my father became the Prince of Avonar did the Dar'Nethi come to understand that Zhid could be restored and take up a normal life again.
"Most of the Restored have long outlived their own families and friends," said my father, shoving the green queen's drone forward—his standard opening, though he seemed to have forgotten that white plays first. "Cedor says the Lady has given them a chance to earn their livelihood in a less public setting, and to feel as if they're making some recompense for their past at the same time. A generous, insightful gesture on her part. And truly, I could not ask for a kinder or more diligent attendant."
I responded by shoving a white drone forward two spaces, and we talked no more of Zhid.
As my father and I walked in the gardens that afternoon, I caught a glimpse of the Lady, but she was hurrying away from us. I stayed a little later than usual, wandering around the stable and the paddocks, hoping she might reappear. But she didn't.
Just before dusk, I left my father to his books and papers and headed back for Gaelie, wondering what we were accomplishing with all our elaborate secrecy. The journey was slow. Clouds had swallowed the full moon, and without the moonlight, the road was treacherous. Halfway down the road, a thunderstorm broke over the Vale. Having stupidly left my cloak at the hospice, I tried to wait out the rain under the trees rather than riding the last few leagues across the open fields to Gaelie.
By the time I arrived at the guesthouse stable, it was nearing midnight, and I was drenched. The rain had never stopped. The stable lad was just dashing out of the stable on his way home when I rode in, so I told him I would see to my own horse. Once the beast was dry, blanketed, and fed, I hunched my shoulders in my wet shirt and picked my way across the muddy stableyard in the dark and the rain. I wished Paulo had not left for Avonar that morning to take my father's latest batch of letters. I wondered how I was going to proceed with my grand investigation if the subject wouldn't show herself. And I hoped I might still be able to cajole the innkeeper into a hot meal to warm the chill that had seeped into my boots and my skin along with the rain. Halfway across the yard, just as I was passing an abandoned cookshed, a mountain fell on my head. . . .
Probably not a mountain, my fogged brain told me as my arms were stretched almost from their sockets, and my faced bumped and scraped over the rank-smelling roughness of mud, straw, and stones. A rock, perhaps, or a wooden cudgel across the back of the head. Something to knock me senseless long enough for my assailant to lash my hands to this beast that was dragging me through the muck and to bind my legs together so tightly, I could find no leverage to get to my feet.
The restless disturbance of large animals to either side and the change of texture from wet muck to damp straw on my face informed me I'd been dragged into the stable. I considered it a great victory to come up with that conclusion. When I lifted my eyelids, the world was blurry and dark.
The dragging stopped. Yellow light flared just beyond my head, so that if I could have lifted the damnably heavy thing, I might have seen who was ripping the gloves from my hands and holding a lantern close enough that my skin felt the warmth of it.
Dig in your feet and push . . . loop the rope around the bastard's neck . . . Just need a little slack in the rope. Wet rope. Wet boots. Miserable. Conjure something . . . you're a sorcerer. Hungry, too . . . surely the cook made something new tonight. . . hate that green-pea mess . . . A warrior's belly should be lean . . . always on the verge of hunger . . . Swirling thoughts, blurry as the night. Nonsense.
Concentrating, I drew my knees toward my midsection and dug in my toes. The immediate result was a sound that could be nothing but the slap of an experienced hand on a horse's rump. The beast lurched forward. The overstretched muscles in my shoulders began to rip, but when my mouth opened in protest, the mountain fell on my head again. . . .
Drowning ! I coughed and spluttered and gagged, fighting for breath. Panic eased when I grasped that the water was knife-edged rivulets of cold rain running down my face and into my nose. What in the name of sense … ?
My cheek bounced on wet leather. The wind hammered a flap of scratchy wool onto my scraped forehead.
Rhythmic jolts bruised my aching gut and threatened to burst my pounding millstone of a head. The world smelled of wet horse. My disorientation slowly resolved itself into the realization that I was draped over the back of the beast. Upon consideration, drowning sounded quite appealing.
I couldn't see my captor or where he was taking me, for a rag had been tied about my eyes. He needn't have bothered. Everything had been blurry already. I knew better than to give any sign I was coherent, but I had to get the rain out of my nostrils before I puked my guts out—which was going to happen any time now. I cautiously rotated my face toward the rough saddle blanket, and my thoughts blurred as well.