I dared not open my mouth lest I scream and give us away. Again I held silent, my throat constricting in panic as I felt the hardening seal. Perhaps this was his sworn revenge. Perhaps he had freed me of the collar only so I would taste life for a single instant, and now he was reimposing the horror. He had sworn to destroy me, and nothing else would do it so absolutely.
Silence… hold… protect him…
The metal cooled on my neck. Nothing changed. The cup fell to the ground from Gerick’s fingers, and he sagged heavily onto my chest.
“Gerick, what’s wrong?”
He seemed to have fallen asleep. My limited range of movement made it difficult to shake him. “Wake up, lad. You’ve got to get away from here. Someday you’ll understand what you’ve done tonight. There are not words enough to thank you.”
He shook his head groggily.
“Do you have to return the implements somewhere?”
“No. Give them,” he mumbled, holding out his hand.
“Here’s one. I can’t reach the other. You’ll have to get it. Find my left foot-sorry, my masters don’t allow me to clean it-now move right, a little more, now forward toward me.”
He set the two vessels together, uncomfortably close to my foot, and blasted them into a slug of metal and stone. “I need to go.”
“Can you get back to the house all right? Has someone put a sleep spell on you?”
“Always… after. Until I can see again. They think I don’t really know what happens.”
“Here, touch my hand”-and with the first glimmering of my own power, I lightened the oppression of the sleep spell-“is that better?”
He wrinkled his brow. “What you do is very different.”
“Perhaps I can explain it sometime.”
“I doubt there will be time. I’ll be asleep all day. Then I’m to go to the Lords’ temple at mid-watch. They’re to bring Seri to me then. I’ll see to her safety. But the Leiran boy will be here in the courtyard before I go, and you must get him away if you can.”
“I’ll come for you.”
“You will do nothing unless I give you leave,” he snapped. “I can put back what I’ve taken away. I’ve freed you to take care of the Leiran boy if you can. Nothing else.”
Without allowing me to say more, Gerick rose and felt his way back to his house. He looked very much alone.
I did not sleep that night, but sat and watched the turning of the cold stars behind the dust haze, felt the waning heat of the stones at my back, and observed the flickering light of the torches reflected in the chains that bound me. As the night wind told me of its travels, I embraced the long tale of death and sorrow that had accompanied my own journey. With every sensation I took a tiny step along the Way, and my power grew as the hearth’s first flame is nourished by offerings of dry tinder, or as a spring is fed by raindrops until it becomes a mighty river.
CHAPTER 42
Gerick
I woke just before sunset, earlier than usual after a night of power-making with Notole. I don’t know whether it was because V’Saro had weakened the sleep spell, or if I waked myself on purpose so I could watch the sun go down. Sunsets wouldn’t be the same with diamond eyes.
The tight white ball of the sun grew huge and red, like a bloodleech engorged and ready to mate. The thin, dry trailers that passed for clouds in Ce Uroth reflected the swollen red light, and smeared it across the entire western horizon. By the next sunset I would be the Heir of D’Arnath and a Lord of Zhev’Na, and the world would be forever changed because of me. For better or worse would remain to be seen. I was ready, except for Seri-my mother. I had to take care of her first.
I had finally figured out what Seri had been trying to tell me with her gifts. When she held me for that one moment before they took her away, I almost believed what she whispered in my ear. But she didn’t know that her mirror could show me my soul-the dark thing laid bare by my power. No beauty was hidden in me.
Odd that it was Seri’s friends, the Leiran boy and the slave, who made the truth so clear. To learn what I needed to free the slave V’Saro and to gather the power to work the enchantment, I had to beg Notole to take me traveling once more. I told her I couldn’t decide about my future, but that if we journeyed again, I would know. So the Three met me in the chamber of the oculus, and we observed the poorest quarters of a Kerotean city, where the air seethed with disease and starvation, and the people with bitterness and lust for vengeance. I devoured their hate, and power thundered inside of me.
Parven took me to the brink of a volcano where I could see the cracks in the earth glowing with liquid fire. And then, Notole led me into the cold, black depths of the oceans, where I touched the strange blind creatures who lived there. I transformed myself into one of those creatures, so that for an hour, all I knew was the dark and the cold and the ponderous weight of the water that was my life. “All this will be yours, young Lord.”
I hated the Lords for making me leave the peaceful ocean. They laughed and promised I’d be able to travel the stars themselves once I was one of them. As we traveled, I asked a hundred questions about everything I could think of-including how the slave collars worked-and then Ziddari left me in my room, blind and spellbound. It had been all I could do to go out to the slave as I had promised. I wanted only to sleep and dream of the ocean depths, or return to the Great Oculus and travel with the Lords again.
So why had I freed V’Saro? I leaned over the balcony rail, but I couldn’t see into the fencing yard where he was still bound to the wall. He was the finest swordsman I had ever seen, every bit the masterful teacher I had expected, and he seemed to be an honorable person. Kind, even. His pain and my thickheadedness had made it impossible to read his plan from his mind. But when he eased the sleep spell, I tasted his Dar’Nethi sorcery for myself. It was weak and soft and unfocused, like a candle flame instead of lightning. I didn’t see how the slave could ever have power enough to stop a kibbazi in its tracks.
And so, on the evening of my last sunset, I decided I had to delay V’Saro’s freedom. I had no wish to kill him or to seal him in the slave collar again, and if he could save himself and the Leiran boy, I had no objection to it. But I could not allow his grand opinion of his abilities to jeopardize my mother’s life. If he failed, she would die for it, and he would, and the Leiran boy, too. I didn’t want to be responsible for any of them.
As for my own future, having now experienced the reality of Dar’Nethi sorcery, I had only one choice. I could not-would not-live with such weakness, not when I had traveled on the winds of the world with the Lords of Zhev’Na. I belonged here.
“How fare you this memorable eve, young Lord?” Darzid stepped onto the balcony behind me.
“I wish it were midnight already.”
“As do I,” he said. And I, said Notole through the jewels in my ear. I also. Parven’s voice boomed in my head like a barrel rolling down a plank.
“What do I need to do before the anointing?”
Darzid was leaning on the balcony rail. Though I wasn’t looking at him, I felt him examining me-inside and out. “Nothing. All will come in due time.”
“I’ve ordered a bath prepared,” I said. “Food, too. I’ve had nothing since yesterday.”