“We have to talk about it, you know.” I held the tangled willow branches aside so Seri could get down to the stream bank where the smooth, flat rocks were being baked by the afternoon sun.
She refused my offered hand, as if accepting my help somehow signaled agreement with my opinions. Stepping from one rock to another, she made her way across the stream, seating herself on a boulder in the very middle of the rippling water. “Not yet. We need a few more days.”
“The answer will be the same, Seri. I can’t stay. He can’t go. We have to decide where to take him.”
I had to return to Avonar. I was its ruler, and my people didn’t know if I was living or dead. The Preceptorate was in shambles, the war was not ended, and my responsibilities to Gerick and Seri could not overshadow the others I had inherited with the body I had been given. But I dared not take Gerick back across the Breach, not even using the Bridge. The Lords had ripped him apart as we fled Zhev’Na, leaving him exposed and vulnerable while immersed in chaos. I had no idea what lasting effects such contact with the Breach might cause. And I wanted him as far away from Zhev’Na and the Zhid and our war as we could keep him. He needed time and distance to heal his wounds before we could risk the Bridge passage again.
“He needs you, Karon. I’ve no power to heal him. He hurts so badly… I see it when he sleeps.”
I stepped across to her rock and pulled her up into my arms. She was shaking. “Talyasse… talyasse… softly, love.” I stroked her hair, trying to soothe her. “You are his healing, as you have always been mine. He listens to you, walks with you, allows you to care for him… and care about him. You’ve brought him so far out of the darkness; you will take him the rest of the way.”
Seri was our strength. Our hope. Ever since I had known her… through our darkest days… in my mindless confusion… she had been the beacon whose clear, unwavering light set our course straight. Everyone saw it but her.
Despite everything I tried, Gerick remained painfully reserved around me, scarcely speaking in my presence. Was it fear, resentment, hatred? I had too little experience of children to know-and what experience could have prepared me to understand what my son had just endured? Gerick had to stay, so Seri had to stay, and I had to go. “I’ll come as often as I can.”
She buried her face in my neck. “It’s not fair.”
“But we both know it’s right. So now again to the question… where can the two of you be safe?”
The last thing in the world I wished was to leave Seri again. We had lost so many years, and while I believed myself to be the Karon she knew-as long as I didn’t look at my reflection-it was clear we could not take up again as if nothing had happened. We, too, needed time and peace. But neither time nor peace was available, and if Seri and Gerick were not to return to Avonar with me, we had to find them a safe haven until we could be together. Not Comigor. Gerick wasn’t ready to take up his old life, either, and we didn’t know whether he ever would be. Not Dunfarrie. I refused to abandon Seri and Gerick to the hardships of that life, where Seri had scraped out an existence for ten years, and Dassine had sent me to find her again. To recover from their ordeals would be trial enough. More importantly, Darzid… the Lord Ziddari… knew of Comigor and Dunfarrie.
Seri pulled away and stooped to fill the water flasks she carried at her waist. “I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll feel safe anywhere away from you.”
Later that evening as we sat around the fire, Seri explained our problem to Gerick and the others. As with so many things, Gerick agreed passively to do whatever we believed best.
Kellea was the one who spoke up. “So does your friend, the scholar, still live outside of Yurevan? Seems a house like his, private, comfortable, out in the countryside, might be just the place. I’d be willing to stay for a while, keep watch as far as I’m able…”
Seri and I looked at each other. It was a perfect solution. Our good friend Tennice would welcome Gerick and Seri to the country home he had inherited from my old professor Ferrante, and the private location of the house would enable me to come and go freely without raising dangerous questions.
Later, when I asked Paulo privately if he would consider staying with Gerick, he refused to dignify my question with anything but a disbelieving glare. It was all I could do to keep from laughing. If anything gave me hope for Gerick, it was his friendship with Paulo. Paulo’s goodness of heart and abiding honesty had touched a place in our son that neither Seri nor I was yet privileged to visit, and we rejoiced in it.
But of course, the rightness of Kellea’s suggestion meant we had no more excuse to delay. Avonar’s need was urgent. We could put our separation off no longer.
Paulo had rounded up the horses we’d left in the valley over a year before, and on a clean-washed spring morning three weeks after our escape from Zhev’Na, Bareil and I watched the four of them ride off southward. I had intended to accompany them along the way, but, in one of the rare times he initiated any conversation, Gerick had reassured me. “They don’t know where I am,” he said, fingering the reins so he wouldn’t have to look at me. “It won’t occur to them that I’m not… what I was… any longer. If I stay hidden, we should be safe enough.”
I had to take him at his word. For him to speak of the Lords at all was clearly difficult. And so, I had thanked him for his confidence and let them go. The jeweled earring and the gold mask with the diamonds lay at the bottom of my pack. I debated whether to destroy the vile things, but the part of me that bore responsibility for the war against the Lords surmised that such artifacts of power might have some use. Gerick had never asked what had become of them.
And so they were gone, and the Dulcé and I were left in the lovely, but so very empty, glade. “We’d best be off,” I said. Up the hill, into the cave, through the Gate, and across the Bridge to this other life that awaited me. I hated the thought of it.
My madrissé smiled sadly and placed a small, wrapped bundle in my hand. “Not quite yet, my lord. You are between times. Before you take up this life, you must be sure of your path.”
“What do you-? Ah.” From the cloth wrapping, I pulled the plain circle of dull wood set with the black crystal pyramid embedded in an iron ring, the object I’d taken from Dassine’s study so long ago. Now I knew what it was-the artifact to which my soul had been bound for the ten years I had existed without a body, ten years of darkness and pain, ten years of intricate enchantments and voracious learning, infused with the boundless energy and devotion of my Healer and jailer, Dassine. Touching the crystal would release me from this body’s bondage and allow me to cross the Verges if I chose to do so. My death, so long delayed, awaited me in its enchantments.
I stared at the thing and was overwhelmed by longing, a desperate ache in the depths of my being that was far colder and far more powerful than my yearning for Seri or my worries about Gerick. “Ah, Bareil, how can I risk using it now? So many are depending-”