They took my offer, and so I was left with the young master alone. I started talking to him as I had before- about Dunfarrie and how the folks what had called me donkey would be fair surprised when they saw me walking straight, if his lordship would ever get himself together so I could go home, that is.
“And what would you do if you got there? The village horses will have forgotten you after all this time.” It was so quiet I almost missed it.
“Oh, they’ll rem- Blazes! Is that you talking to me or is it my own self?”
“We don’t sound all that much alike most times.”
“Blazes! Damn! I got… I got to tell them… the lady and the Prince.”
“Don’t leave.” He reached out and grabbed my arm. “Please…”
“No. Not a bit of it. I’ll just stay right here. I might just holler out then, if that’s all right.”
“No… I mean… if you’d just wait a little.”
He was scared. Not in the way he’d been scared of the terrible things in his head. Not cowardly scared. He told me how strange it was that he knew me better than he knew his parents, and how the Prince had been inside his head, but such wasn’t like really meeting him in his own body or anything.
I agreed it was strange. My parents had been dead or run off since I was a nub. I couldn’t imagine having them walk in on me, knowing more about me than I did about them, and having all sorts of blood oaths and killing between us. “All I know is that you don’t have to be afraid of them,” I said to him. “They care about you more than anything.”
We talked about other things for a bit, about horses and sword fighting, and about how I had worked in the stable at Comigor and he never even knew it, and how he had seen me outside the window in the council chamber in Avonar, while I’d been watching him inside. And while we talked, the tent flap opened, and the lady and the Prince came in. The young master turned his head that way even though his eyes were still bandaged up. Then he took a deep breath and said, “I think I’m all right.”
CHAPTER 47
Karon
He wasn’t all right, of course. It would be a long time until we knew what the result of Gerick’s ordeal would be. We weren’t even sure he was mortal, for he had neither eaten nor drunk anything for nine days. But we took the bandages off that same night, and he did indeed have eyes again, beautiful brown eyes just like his mother’s. To our joy and relief, he could see with them, too.
Soon he was able to eat as well, not having to resort to the herbs and potions Kellea gave me to help keep things down until the last remnants of the slave food were out of my blood. On the afternoon after he first spoke, ten days after we had left Zhev’Na behind us, Gerick stepped out of the tent and went walking in the sunlight with Paulo.
He wouldn’t talk about what the Lords had done to him or how much of their poisonous enchantments remained, and from the first he alternated between periods of quiet patience and intense irritability. What was most unsettling was how his eyes would take on a dark gray cast when he was angry. I saw no evidence that he possessed exceptional power anymore, only the intrinsic talents of any Dar’Nethi youth who had not yet come into his primary talent.
I believed his dark moods reflected the intensity of his craving for the power he had lost. The glimpses of his experiences I had come across while working at his healing were extraordinary, uses of sorcery alien to anything I knew of, but his determined reserve precluded any deeper questioning about them. And he made it clear from the beginning that he didn’t wish for me to tell him anything of how I or any other Dar’Nethi acquired power to support our various talents. Seri and I were uneasy at his erratic temper, but we agreed it was only to be expected. We would just have to take things slowly. We grieved sorely for his childhood, stolen away in the deserts of Zhev’Na.
“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…”