“Tell me what they’ve done to you. Before you go any further. I can’t let you-”
“I hear from you and the Leiran boy that the only way to save my mother’s life is to set you free. I don’t believe it and I don’t trust you, but I’ve been wrong about everything in my life, so why should I expect to be right this time?” He knelt between my legs and reached around my head, fumbling at my collar, carefully avoiding the triggers that would make me convulse. “I’ve obtained the knowledge, the power, and the materials I need to neutralize your collar. I’ve very little time, but if I start right now, then perhaps I can manage it, so I would suggest you stay still.” His cold fingers paused at the top of the seal. “Be ready.”
“Do it,” I said, feeling his enchantment taking shape, growing huge and terrible, cutting first into my flesh, and then into my mind, and then into my soul like a fiery razor.
I sank deep into myself. Silence… hold… protect your son who has mortgaged his sight and his soul to set you free…
Slowly, relentlessly, Gerick moved his fingers down the seal, melting it away and letting the scalding, foul stuff dribble into his silver-lined vessel. My face was buried in his chest, I, who should be protecting him, comforting him, and all I could do was use his taut, slender body to muffle my sobs. No more than a quarter of an hour passed, but I became so lost in the throbbing haze of pain that I didn’t even notice when he shifted position and began to unseal the bonds from my wrists.
Silence… hold… to protect him… It is bearable because it is necessary. It is for your wife and your son that you never thought to see. How blessed is life… how glorious the Way that can devise a path beyond all expectations… to come through pain and despair to find such joy…
The desert breeze that chilled the rivulets of sweat coursing down my body began to whisper of endless sand, of tiny hollows of moisture deep hidden to escape the rapacious sun, of hardy, bony creatures that scuttered cleverly from one scrap of shade to another or burrowed deep in the cool embrace of the earth, of dry skeletal plants that yet held a core of life. And on the very edge of the wind was the kiss of snow, blown all the way from the pinnacles of the Mountains of Light, and the faintest breath of the awakening Vales of Eidolon. “Oh, gods, young Prince…”
“Got to hurry.” His head drooped as he carefully moved the crucible. The filled vessel radiated searing heat; the silver had melted away. “Can you take this? Dispose of it?” His tongue was thick with sleep.
“Lower it just a little so I can reach it.” Awkwardly I took the crucible and managed to empty the molten metal into the hole I had scraped out for relieving myself.
“Now I’ve got to replace the seal… so they won’t notice. Give me the vessel with the powder.”
“As an assistant, I have decided limitations,” I said, using my feet to retrieve the cup I had dropped while he removed the seal.
Gerick held it in his hand. Heat blazed from the little vessel, and the gray powder sagged into liquid. His power was awesome in its magnitude and villainous in its composition. Once I sensed it, even so faintly as in that first hour of my release, I wanted to tell him to stop, not to use such power even for good purpose. But he had already wrenched my head forward onto his chest once more, wiped a cold ointment on the raw strip of skin between the ends of the collar, and begun to drip the hot liquid on it, guiding it with his fingers.
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.