But what of you, Father?
Ah, I wish so very much - But my span of years was done long ago. Dassine gave me the chance to know you, to know of my people and our world that no Exile could remember, and to embrace my Seri once again. How could I ask for more? An eternity of sadness tinged his words.
But what of D’Natheil? His time was not yet. One of you should still be alive.
D’Natheil has not enough mind to go back alone. So much was destroyed by the Bridge when he was young. The rest, when Dassine displaced his soul with mine.
Another burst of color and the music splashed about us. My father’s presence was a lacework of frost, thinning in the blaze of winter sunlight.
Quickly, son. I will hold here at the Verges for as long as I can. Tell your mother that she crossed with me as I told her she would. Live with joy, and with all my love.
And as if he were pushing me under the water to teach me to swim, he forced me deep into his mind, leaving me only enough awareness that I might hear the call that would draw me back to life.
But I was a Soul Weaver, and I reached for my father as he had reached for me, and I drew him in beside me to wait…
CHAPTER 34
Seri
If it had been daytime, or I’d been more awake, or the room had been filled with light and activity, I would never have sensed it. It was no more than the glimmer of a forgotten inspiration, or a feather out of place in your pillow, or the earliest stirring of a child in the womb, but it jolted me awake and I listened until I thought my inner ears might bleed. There. Again…
Gerick, child, is it you? Is it true what Ven’Dar said, that you can find your way back? Follow my voice, dear one. I shaped each word carefully.
At the end of half an hour the touch was stronger, still faint, still very far away, but I refused to believe it was some midnight fantasy of a tired and grieving widow. A lamp flared from the doorway, searing my eyes and rousing Ven’Dar, who also had dozed off.
“I was just - ” said Paulo, but I held up my hand for quiet.
Mother. The call, the touch, had come again.
“Vasrin’s hand,” whispered Ven’Dar, watching as I focused my attention inward. The sorcerer slipped off the edge of the table, and hurried around to where he could touch Gerick’s body.
Words poured from me into the night, like a river gathering its power and leaping from a cliff into a bottomless gorge below. Some of the words made sense, some didn’t. Anyone would have called me a fool, but I’d come so far from logic and rational expectations in the years of my life that nothing was beyond the realm of possibility. My husband had once come back from the dead. Why not again? Why not my son?
I heard a harsh intake of breath from across the stone table where Ven’Dar hovered over Gerick. Then the sorcerer, in muted excitement, said, “Continue, my lady. Don’t let go.”
I couldn’t even move to look. I couldn’t do anything lest the fragile connection be lost.
Listen to my voice, Gerick. Find your way. Come back and live.
Can’t… The stone…
The black stone pyramid was still clutched in Karon’s cold hand. Dared I move it?
Hurry…
With a glance at Ven’Dar, I pulled the smooth stone from the linked hands and set it aside.
“By the holy Way, you’ve done it!” said Ven’Dar.
I scrambled across the platform until I was kneeling at Gerick’s side with my hands on his face. A tinge of color graced his pale cheeks, and a faint breath passed his pale lips. I rubbed his hands, speaking aloud now, talking, weeping, laughing, babbling, coaxing him back to the world.
Ven’Dar put his arm around my shoulders and laughed until tears came. “You can rest now, my lady. He’s here. You don’t want to drive him away. Give him a little time.”
So I sat back, and instead of Gerick’s warm hand, I held Karon’s cold one, and watched my son wake up. It was gradual at first. His color improved; his breathing deepened; his hands and eyelids began to twitch. Then somewhere in his journey, he crossed a dramatic threshold that caused him to sit bolt upright, gasping for breath, his eyes wide, seeing things that were not in the room with us.
“… got to come… not finished… ” He swallowed and breathed. “… oh, yes, you can. You must… ”
It may have been the sound of his own voice that brought him to awareness, or perhaps the shattering of glass when Paulo dropped his lamp. But, whatever the reason, Gerick squeezed his eyes tightly shut and then opened them to look straight at me.
“Welcome back,” I said, throwing my arms around him, trying to warm him, to quiet his shivering. He held me tight, but clearly his mind was on something else. When I drew back a bit to look at his face, his eyes were on Karon’s body.
“I tried to bring him back with me.” He touched Karon’s lifeless hand. “I thought… ”
“It’s all right,” I said, laughing and weeping all at once. “I’m sure it’s all right.”
“Tell us, young Gerick… Please. About the Lords,” said Ven’Dar, anxiously. “We’ve seen signs… I’m sorry. I can’t wait for the proper time to ask. I must know.”
“They didn’t come back with me,” said Gerick. “I don’t know if that means they’re dead, but we separated from them beyond the Verges, and they’re not in me any longer.” And he told us all that had happened when he touched Karon’s outstretched hand.
“… and so I thought it wasn’t fair. Imprisoned so horribly for ten years, and then trapped with D’Natheil for the rest of it. A slave in Zhev’Na for over a year. He had so much life left in him, and I thought it was because only one of them was supposed to be dead, and it had to be D’Natheil because D’Natheil couldn’t come back. I guess I was wrong, and that’s why it didn’t work.”
“He made his choice,” I said. “He did exactly what he wanted - set you free. And Avonar. And all of us.”
“He was free, too,” said Gerick. “By the end, there was no more D’Natheil.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“But I wanted him to live.”
We sat together at Karon’s side. I was too wrung out to say much of anything. Yet the passions of a sixteen-year-old are not easily dulled. Gerick kept his hand on Karon’s unmoving chest. “He’s close, Mother. He wants so much to be here with us.”
It must have been near midnight when we finally persuaded Gerick, half sick with exhaustion, to go back to my apartments with Paulo to eat and sleep for a while. I promised that Karon would not be left alone and that one of us would continue talking to him. Paulo laid Ven’Dar’s hooded cloak over Gerick’s shoulders to protect my son from curious eyes. Gerick was still condemned and feared, and it would take a while for the Dar’Nethi - and all of us - to understand what had really taken place that day.
As soon as the boys had gone, Ven’Dar summoned Bareil to prepare Karon’s body for his funeral rites. “The people will need to see him laid out. You understand. So they can believe and accept.”
“Of course I understand.”
“You should go with your sons, lady. I’ll wait here, keep our promise to Gerick, until Bareil arrives to take care of the Prince. You’ve had a day such as no one should ever have, and tomorrow will have its own burdens. We have a number of decisions to make, and perhaps some journeying to do.”
“And what of you, Ven’Dar? Tomorrow you will be anointed Heir of D’Arnath, and face the task of rebuilding a world. Perhaps you’re the one who needs to take a few hours of sleep.”
“Another hour of peace here would probably benefit me more. I have a great deal to consider.” He looked at me quizzically. “Will your son have regrets, do you think, when he looks back to know he might have been the Heir of D’Arnath?”