Very quickly, then, would come to birth another day that had been hidden from me. In Dassine’s light I saw again the face of my mother as she sang me to sleep, her intricate compositions of word and melody taking physical shape and weaving themselves into my childish dreams. In that light I heard once more the voice of my father whom I loved, watched him sit in his hall of justice, ruling with benevolence and honor those who would burn him alive if they knew what he was-a sorcerer of uncommon power. In that candlelight I learned again the art of healing from my mentor, Celine, and felt again the fiery kiss of my knife as I shared my life’s gift with the sick and the dying. There I heard the reports of the slaughter of my family and my people and the devastation of my home. There I reread the books that I loved and those that bored me. I suffered the indignities of childhood and the revelations of youth, and I rediscovered my love of archeology, reacquiring my knowledge of the culture and history and art of peoples that were not my people, but whom my ancestors had embraced as their own.
Hours and days and weeks I lived in the light of Dassine’s candles. And when the light died away at last and my mind limped back to his dim study, Dassine would tell me how long I had been away-four hours, perhaps, or five of present time.
After he had put the candles away and given me my robe, he would share food and drink that had been set on a tray in the middle of his scuffed pine table. The meal was wholesome and plentiful, but always plain. I’d eat what I could, and then I’d walk in Dassine’s garden to bask in the sun or the starlight and inhale the sweetness of the open air. Inevitably I would begin to ponder what I had learned… until my questions drove me to the edge of the precipice. Then Dassine would send me to sleep and, a few hours later, wake me to begin it all again.
I had no idea how long I had been with Dassine. Time had lost its pristine simplicity, and every sunrise signaled a further distortion. Somewhere in the months and weeks just past was a beginning… an eternity of stupefied confusion while Dassine laid a foundation in my head so that he could speak with me of D’Arnath’s Bridge between the worlds and what my actions to prevent its destruction had done to me. He spoke now only in the vaguest generalities, saying that the truth of my experiences must come from inside myself as I relived them.
On this very early morning-the bright, windy cold morning when the world had held itself together for once- the Healer watched from the doorway to the lectorium as I shed my robe and burrowed into the mound of rumpled pillows and blankets. My eyes were already closed when I felt a blanket drawn up over my bare shoulder and a hand laid on my hair. “Sleep well, my lord.”
“D’Natheil! Wake! You must be up. The hounds are baying, and we must ride with them a while.” Dassine shook me awake with unaccustomed vigor.
It was unusual for him to call me by that name-mine, yes, but not the one I had come to believe was closest to me. If I’d not been so groggy, I might have wondered more at his use of it, but it had been just after dawn when I had last collapsed on the bed. The light told me it was still early morning, and cramps and stiffness told me that I’d not even had time to change position.
“Have mercy, old man,” I groaned and buried my head in the bedclothes. “Can’t you give me an hour’s peace?”
“Not this morning. We have visitors, and you must see them.”
“Tell them to come back.” I could muster no enthusiasm, even for such a glorious variation in our regimen as a visitor.
As far as my own sight or hearing witnessed, no other beings existed in the universe, though I suspected that someone else shared the house with us. On the table in the lectorium I often found two glasses smelling of brandy that I’d not been allowed to taste. And I could not imagine the testy Healer making soup or filling my washing pitcher with tepid water.
“The Preceptors of Gondai have come to wait upon their Prince. I’ve put them off for more than three months, and if I don’t produce you, they’ll cause trouble. I can’t spare the energy to fight them, so you must get up and present yourself.”
“The Preceptors… Exeget, Ustele, the others?” The urgency of his words prodded me to function at some minimal level. I sat up, trying to stir some blood into my limbs.
“Yes, you blithering boy. They sit in my library at this very moment in all their varieties of self-importance and deception. I told them you were sleeping, but they said they would await Your Grace’s pleasure. So if you would like another hour’s sleep before we begin work again, rouse yourself, get to the library, and get rid of the bastards. We’ve no time to dally with them.”
“What will I say? I know nothing more than a twelve-year-old.” My faith in Dassine’s assurances that all I now remembered was truth took an ill turn. What if the memories he had instilled were only wild fictions and not the unmasked remnants of my own experiences? But a glance at the sagging flesh around his eyes reminded me that he slept no more than I. I couldn’t swear that his mysterious game was the only hope of the world as he insisted, but I believed that he did nothing from cruelty or indifference. I had to trust him.
“You will say as little as possible. They’re here to verify that I’m not grooming some impostor to supplant the line of D’Arnath.”
I couldn’t help but be skeptical. “And how am I to prove that? I doubt I can reassure them by telling the story of my life-lives.”
Dassine jabbed at my chest with his powerful fingers. “You are D’Natheil, the true Heir of D’Arnath. You can pass the Gate-wards, walk the Bridge, and control the chaos of the Breach between the worlds. The blood in your veins is that of our Princes for the last thousand years, and no one-no one-can deny or disprove it. It’s true that you’ve had experiences others cannot understand, and we cannot tell these fossils about them quite yet, but I swear to you by all that lives that you are the rightful Prince of Avonar.”
It was impossible to doubt Dassine.
“Then they’ll want to know what I’m doing here with you all these months, which, lest you’ve forgotten, you’ve never explained.”
“They have no right to question you. You are their sovereign.”
Ah, yes. It didn’t matter that in my life in the mundane world, my younger brother, Christophe, had inherited the gift of Command from my beloved father, the Baron Mandille. In my life here in the world of Gondai-in this Avonar of sorcery and magic-I, D’Natheil, the third son of Prince D’Marte, had been named Heir of D’Arnath when my father and two older brothers had been slain in quick succession. When my name had been called by the Preceptorate-the council of seven sorcerers who advised the Heir and controlled the succession-I could scarcely write the letters that comprised it, because no one had ever thought that a third son, so wild, and so much younger than the others, would ever be needed to rule my devastated land.
My memories of D’Natheil’s life ended abruptly on the day I turned twelve, the day my hands were anointed and I came into my inheritance. On that day these same Preceptors waiting for me now had decided that I must essay D’Arnath’s enchanted Bridge and attempt to repair the weakness caused by years of war and neglect and the corrupting chaos of the Breach between the worlds.