My head was about to twist inside out with the confusion. “He killed my father… Tomas… the man I believed to be my father.”
“It was Zhid magic what killed Duke Tomas.”
“How do you know? Why do you think anyone would tell you the truth?”
“Nobody told me nothing. I was there. I saw it.”
This was impossible. “I don’t believe you.”
“Look in my head. Can’t you tell what’s real and what somebody planted there? What good is all this sorcery if you can’t figure out when a person is telling you the truth?”
“I could tell.”
“Then do it. We’ve got to save the Lady Seri. I owe her and the Prince most everything, and to stop me trying to save her, you’ll have to kill me first, so you’d best get on with it.”
I fumbled about in the dark until I found his head, and I put my hands on the sides of it and told him to think of anything he wanted to tell me. Only that. By the time I pulled my hands away, I knew everything the Leiran boy knew from the time he first met Seri in Dunfarrie until the day my father, the Prince, had slit himself open so I couldn’t be corrupted by killing him. The Leiran boy wouldn’t tell me anything else-about how he got to Zhev’Na or how they planned to get me out. He wouldn’t think about the Prince, except how kind he was, and how he just couldn’t believe the man was really dead. But it was enough, and I could look no further anyway. Never had any injury hurt so much as the truth.
“Hey, are you all right?”
I couldn’t answer him. It was not all right. It could never be all right. I was able to add so many things he couldn’t know. The Lords were going to win. They had made me into what they wanted, and now I’d given them the very piece that would ensure their victory-a hold on me. They hated my mother as much as they hated the Prince. Maybe more. I almost laughed. I’d been wrong about every single thing in my whole life, blind long before my evil starting eating my eyes away. The Leiran boy had seen so clearly. He had asked how I could think the Prince had killed Lucy when I had only seen his knife in my dreams. But Darzid had twisted my dreams from the beginning.
A rustling in the straw. The Leiran boy had gone. Just as well. I would most likely betray him, too. But before I realized what was happening, a smear of light appeared in the horse box. I turned away, but not quickly enough.
“Blazing demons!” He pulled my face back around. “What did they do to you?”
I shoved him backward. “It’ll go away.” But it wouldn’t. Not ever.
“Does it hurt?”
“No. I just can’t see very well right now.”
“Damn! So did you get the story out of me?”
“Yes.”
“And you believe me?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, what are we going to do?”
“I’ll have to get her. I think I can do it. Then I’ll try to get you both out of Zhev’Na.”
“And you, too.”
“That won’t be possible.”
“She won’t go without you.”
“There’s no other way. They’ll kill her unless I do what they want. They may kill her anyway, but I’ll try.”
“Can you keep a secret?”
“Obviously not as well as I would like.” Otherwise my mother would not be Ziddari’s prisoner. Wrong about everything. Stupid. Worthless. Wicked.
“I mean, if I were to tell you something right now that might help… it wouldn’t go straight to the Lords, now would it?”
“They don’t know about you.” At least I’d managed that much.
“What if there was someone else in Zhev’Na who could help you?”
“I don’t think there’s anyone who could possibly-”
“I know you don’t think nobody can do anything but you, but this person… he’d like to help. And he’s good. The best.”
“We can’t get Seri away from Zhev’Na unless the Lords allow it. It doesn’t matter how good your friend is at anything.”
“I think you should talk to him.”
“Bring him here if you want.”
“He can’t. He’s really stuck.”
“This is stupid.”
“You won’t think so. But you got to keep it secret.”
“All right.”
“Do you swear?”
“Yes. I swear. Take me to him. But you’ll have to lead me.”
“Blazes.”
CHAPTER 41
Karon
I was at wit’s end. I had dabbled in madness for so long that I knew no other way to live. A day with any semblance of normality would probably have me screaming in terror. I fought and trained and stayed alive. I watched for the least opportunity, the least chink in the armor of Zhev’Na, and came up with nothing.
Paulo had been despondent after my match with Vruskot, for he’d been sure that Gerick would take me on as swordmaster. He told me of his several encounters with my son, and his belief that Gerick was desperately torn between the demands of his masters and his own nature. “He’s decided to be like them, but he don’t like it at all. He just don’t see any other way to be.”
“They want him very badly. Only the one person-the anointed Heir of D’Arnath-has power over the Breach and the Bridge and the Gates.”
“But if you’re still alive… Maybe the anointing just won’t work.”
“As long as I’m trapped in this collar, I’m as good as dead. And unless I’m free to use them, the Heir’s powers will pass straight on to Gerick when he’s anointed.”
Dismal thoughts, all of this. It didn’t help my morale that Paulo was almost caught on that visit. A guard chose just the wrong time to make a circuit of the slave pen with a blazing torch, and Paulo had to roll out of the light. I set up a racket on the bars, feigning a bout of madness-a perilously easy bit of playacting. On his next visit, I would command Paulo to stay away from me. A bleak prospect. His cheerful grin was the best thing in my life.
My unease was not at all soothed by what Paulo had reported of Gerick’s “changes.”
“They say he’s come a demon, afraid of the light, and that he goes days at a time without eating or sleeping, and that he’s roaming about the place inside people’s heads. He told me- He told me he was going to be one of the Lords. Is that what’s happening?”
Of course it was. Corruption was not enough. All the power Gerick would inherit when he came of age would be theirs, but only if there was nothing of him left that might resist them. I had long since lost count of the passing time, but weeks had gone by since I had been celebrated for living out an entire year in the slave pen. Gerick’s anointing could not be far distant. The Three would be the Four. Chaos. Disaster.
The days continued.
Straw tickled my nose. Waking instantly, I rolled toward the bars.
“I’ve got bad news. They’ve got her-”
“Ah, no…” It was all I could do not to scream, to tear at the bars, to bang on them until a guard would come for me and I could strangle him with my bare hands. I had dared not even think of Seri lest somehow the knowledge of her presence be detected in me. It had been the only protection I could give her.