"Did I not promise a prize worth the winning?" D'Sanya was laughing at me as I marveled at the perfection of each delicacy I loaded on my plate. "What use to be a princess of the Dar'Nethi if one cannot bring something more to the table than meat and bread? Since I've used my talents for one useful thing tonight, I'm now entitled to use them for something frivolous."
The useful thing she'd done had been to heal my lame horse, who now grazed peacefully far below us at the lower end of the moonlit path. We had ridden from the stableyard across the valley to find the stone marker that would indicate our path into the hills. Impatient, I refused to follow the track the long way around and took off across the grass, racing to beat D'Sanya to the path. Halfway across the valley floor, my horse reaped the worst consequence of nighttime riding. His shoulders and head dipped suddenly. As he stumbled to a halt with an ear-shattering shriek, I felt, more than heard, the ominous dry-wood snap of a slender bone. I leaped from the saddle and rolled quickly out of the way, cursing all rabbits, gophers, and blind, stupid riders.
D'Sanya had circled back while I tried to comfort the wild-eyed beast who struggled to his feet, tossing his head and snorting painfully as he tried to put weight on his right foreleg. Paulo would yell at me unmercifully— and deservedly—for ruining a fine mount for an evening's pleasure.
"Are you injured?" asked D'Sanya.
I reached for the quivering beast's neck but he shied and tossed his head. "Unbruised. But Nacre . . . I'm afraid I've done for him."
"Take care of it quickly, then, before the poor creature goes mad."
Take care of it? What was she thinking? That I'd slit the poor beast's throat, then wash my hands for dinner? "Not yet. If I could get a Horsemaster up here to see to him, we might be able to save him for breeding. He's a fine runner."
"Well, of course, I don't mean kill him! How can you let him suffer so? Surely you can take care of a horse's hurts."
My face blazed, and my insides churned. In ordinary times, I used my sorcerer's power not one day in thirty. That way, I was never required to grow my power beyond whatever happened to germinate in me on its own, just by the fact that I was born my father's son. The ways the Lords increased their power were grotesque and cruel, and I refused to use them any more. The ways of the Dar'Nethi were maddeningly slow and impossible to master; my feeble attempts to use them did little but cause an unhealthy craving in my blood. As I'd expended everything I had when I entered my father's body and tested him that morning, I had not a scrap of power left. No ordinary Dar'Nethi would live that way. Gathering power from the experiences of their lives was as compelling to them as breathing.
Well, she was going to find out sooner or later that I was no ordinary Dar'Nethi—not when it came to sorcery. "No, I can't."
"You can't? You mean you won't." She slipped from her horse, glaring at me. But when I failed to respond, her expression of indignant accusation softened into puzzlement. "No, you're saying that you don't have the power; and you don't summon it. Ever?"
"Not since Zhev'Na."
"Of course." She expelled a quick breath of sympathy. "Here, let me take care of the poor beast. Hold him still."
I grabbed the trailing reins, caught hold of the bridle, and held Nacre's head, trying to remember the things Paulo had told me could soothe a pain-maddened horse. But my efforts were unnecessary. D'Sanya touched Nacre between his eyes and whispered a few words, instantly quieting the animal. She had adorned every one of her fingers with a silver band, some plain, some intricately worked, and they glittered and shone in the moonlight as she ran her fingers over Nacre's leg from shoulder to hoof. The depth and intensity of her enchantment almost knocked me off my feet. Though it was over in an instant, I felt as if I'd been sucked up into the heart of a whirlwind and then set down again in the hospice pasture with all my joints put together in the wrong order.
"You were there when you came of age," she said, stroking the now-healthy horse's nose, patting his neck, and fondling his ears, soothing his lingering agitation. "I've heard it said that those who came of age in Zhev'Na have difficulty developing power and never find their true talent, but I thought that was only those who were slaves. Crippled as they were . . ."
"I don't know about others. For me, it's impossible."
"Heaven's lights, how do you bear it?"
I was thankful she didn't wait for an answer, or ask for more specific details, like the nature of my true talent or whether I even had one. Better for her to assume I could do nothing. To reveal my true talent was to reveal my identity, for the only Soul Weaver known to the Dar'Nethi was the corrupted son of Prince D'Natheil who was supposed to be safely dead.
She spoke no more of sorcery as we tethered the horses in a grassy glade and walked up the path. Perhaps she thought it would bother me to consider the immensity of her own gifts when I professed to have none. I could think of no subtle way to ask her if she had always possessed such power or if it was somehow grown larger since her awakening, so I just listened to her chatter, which took up again where it had left off.
All through our supper D'Sanya talked of one thing and another: of her two older brothers, the quiet, serious D'Leon who had succeeded D'Arnath and then fallen in battle with the Zhid after only five years, and the wild, mischievous D'Alleyn who had completed the Gates to his father's Bridge between the worlds. "You can't imagine how it is to read of my brothers in manuscripts so ancient they would crumble were it not for the Archivists' enchantments, when it seems only a few years since they filled my bedchamber with birds on my sixteenth birthday. To hear that D'Leon died so young and so valiantly and that D'Alleyn, the wicked tease, ruled with wisdom for fifty years. I do miss them so."
Then she went on to talk of the hospice, and her plans to build a second one in the Vale of Maroth far to the south. "Na'Cyd has three Builders working already. I'll need to visit the site soon to see how they progress. They argue a great deal over the design, and I speak to one and think the matter settled, then another one sends me a letter telling me the faults of the first, and the third sends a message threatening to abandon the project if I can't persuade the other two that arches should be sealed by a Word Winder to ensure their strength. All I want is for the building to be completed so I can help more people. Enough have applied to me in the past few weeks that I could fill the place already."
"I know exactly what you mean," I said. "The one who conceives the shape of the building gets insulted when the one who must lay the bricks says you can't lay bricks in such a shape. The builder is incensed when the artist says a better builder could find a way. I've had to lock them in a room—" I stopped abruptly when I realized what I was doing . . . talking about the Bounded, which she must not know of.
When my father had taken me out of Zhev'Na through the Breach, I had submerged myself in the chaotic matter of the rift between the worlds to escape the pain of separating from the Lords. Somehow, my act had imposed shape and coherence where there had been none before. My strange little kingdom would not exist had I not been a Soul Weaver linked to the Lords of Zhev'Na, had I not been desperate enough to do anything to separate myself from them. And my subjects—the Singlars—had given me just such problems as D'Sanya's as we rebuilt their tower cities after the war with the Lords.
"Go on. Tell me more of your builders and bricklayers," she said, leaning across the table, lips parted, eyes shining. "You've said so little of your life. Nothing of what you do in ordinary times."
I shoved aside thoughts of the Bounded and the Singlars. "Nimrolan Vale is so remote that, in the years of the war, we had to make sure we could defend ourselves if the war came to us. For centuries we crowded together in horrid, cramped towns, everyone on top of one another. So we're trying to replace what we have with more scattered dwellings, less fortified, open to our woodlands, the way things once were. I've been helping. …"