So I did nothing. As the excited crowds wandered back to public salons or their homes, I sat in the window seat, still envisioning Karon on the deserted balcony, the wind caressing his long hair like a lover’s hand. Gentle Aimee brought me a shawl and a cup of tea, thinking to quiet my shivering, but though the nights of the waning summer were indeed growing cool, a blanket of goose down would not have warmed me. So the girl led me to the candlelit bedchamber and took off my shoes and covered me with the soft blankets she had chosen just for me. “Try to sleep, my lady, while I fetch the princess. I’ll wake you before dawn.”
Curled up in the dark nest of the great bed, I had no choice but to let go of everything. I couldn’t think any more, for there was nothing I could bear to think on.
Sometime deep in the night, long after the vigil candle had burned itself out, I was roused from my exhausted half-sleep. A wide hand lay on my cheek, gently brushing away my dreamer’s tears. “Do not weep, beloved,” came a voice in the dark. “All that can be done, I will do. Listen carefully to me. You must not give up, even in the depths of sorrow. I need you to play the part that only you have ever been able to play. Follow the Way, my love, and know that you will be with me forever.”
Before I could shake off the heaviness of sleep or open my eyes to see his face, he kissed my eyelids softly, and I sank into a peaceful, embracing slumber. When Aimee shook me awake in the dark hour before dawn to report Roxanne still missing, I might have thought it was all a dream, save for the rose of blazing scarlet that bloomed at my bedside.
CHAPTER 30
Karon
D’Natheil hated waiting. His irritation would begin as a tightness in the jaw, proceed through nervous chewing of lips and fingers, leak out into restless movements of increasingly destructive tendency, and finally explode in some verbal or physical violence that served no purpose but to grow the dark and bitter core of anger that lived inside him. Inside me.
There had once lived a Gardener in Avonar, my lost Avonar, who enchanted the city gardens to bloom for one day longer each year, so that after thirty years the city was known for its marvelous climate that allowed flowers to bloom a full month longer than others. His was a story told to J’Ettanni children to teach them patience. In a life where any oddity could get you burned alive, and among a people where the savoring of every moment, every sensation, resulted in an increase of the glorious power at the root of being, patience was very near the pinnacle of the pyramid of virtue.
The necessity for patience was one of the fundamental conflicts between D’Natheil and me, the reason he had never been able to summon the power he wanted to wield, the reason I could no longer heal, and the reason I would never be able to lead the Dar’Nethi as they needed. This was, perhaps, the hardest truth revealed by the Rite of Purification. I had emerged from the Pool of Rebirth renewed in spirit and found Seri living and herself again, the most precious gift I had begged from life standing before me, yet I could not savor the moment for needing… wanting… craving to get on with the business of executing my son. I was as much myself as I could ever be, and it was not enough.
So, as I lay hidden just beyond the Gate of D’Arnath’s Bridge, watching through the wall of white fire as my friend Ven’Dar knelt in serene meditation waiting for someone to murder him, I found myself with jaws clenched, plunging my dagger over and over again into the cold mud in front of my face. Cold mud was the current aspect of the small island of stability I could create from the constantly shifting chaos behind the Gate. After today… no more. No more blood on my sword. No more feeling the exhilarating surge of enchantment when I slipped through the roaring Gate fire. No more of this unending dispute between the man I was and the man I wanted to be. No more of anything, if all went as I planned. As I ground my dagger into the gritty slop, I almost laughed aloud at the word. Planned. A comet streaking through a conjunction of the planets was more under my control than the hours to come.
Ven’Dar had been kneeling on the pearl-gray stone for hours, motionless, his arms outstretched to embrace D’Arnath’s fire. He was most likely freezing. His white robe was thin, and the chamber of the Gate was chilly, the Gate fire a manifestation of enchantment rather than flame. But the cold, and the creeping dread of a knife in the back, and the nagging anxiety as to whether his friend, the Prince of Avonar, was still there behind the roaring curtain, still awake, still watching, still sane, had been stitched with patience into the tapestry of Ven’Dar’s life as he took his next step along the Way. I envied Ven’Dar his patience and his cold and his fear. D’Natheil didn’t understand the Way and did his best to keep me from feeling anything but his anger.
Think. Use this time. Plan. What if Men’Thor doesn’t take the bait? What if dawn comes and Ven’Dar is unthreatened? You’ll have one hour to take Seri. and Ven’Dar and Paulo before the Preceptors, confirm Ven’Dar as the successor, and convince the Preceptors that Men’Thor and his son are murderers. Risky. Uncertain.
A weapon snatched from an assailant’s hand, imprinted with his will to do murder, would be so much better. Even Ustele would not be able to argue with it. Then I’d have done all I could do for my people’s future, and I could safely move on to the day’s other matters: my son and the Lords of Zhev’Na and dying.
You could have left yourself more time. Yes, speed was necessary to keep them off balance, but so many things could go wrong. I had just wanted it done.
To my relief, it was only a short time later that the door to the chamber of the Gate - purposely and publicly left unwarded as Ven’Dar began his vigil - swung open. Men’Thor, still arrayed in his elaborate finery, strode through. I wiped the mud from my dagger, drew my sword, and crouched low, ready to spring. Timing would be everything. Ven’Dar’s life and Men’Thor’s guilt must both be preserved. I felt neither satisfaction nor fear, only the urgency to get on with it.
Men’Thor was alone and his hands were empty as he stood glaring down at my friend like a stern father ready to mete out judgment to an errant child. “What winding did you cast to place the ruin of Avonar in your hand, Ven’Dar? What enchantment did you conjure to force the mad Prince to waste this magnificence - D’Arnath’s holy fire - and leave it blazing at the feet of a minor magician?”
I could scarcely hear the brittle words, squeezed through Men’Thor’s icy composure. Ven’Dar, lost in his meditation, showed no awareness of his companion.
“Of all the obstacles in my path, I never thought you would be the one to cause me to stumble. I never gave you credit for artifice. Why aren’t you dead?” He walked around Ven’Dar like a disdainful tailor inspecting his client’s worn apparel. “And now what am I to do with you? Will we be forced to make do with our mad Prince, and have you constantly at his ear encouraging his unhealthy yearning for these mundanes? At least you are one of us… ”
If sound had any meaning behind the roaring Gate fire, Men’Thor would have heard my sigh when he pulled the dagger from beneath his gem-studded belt. Soon… soon it would be done.
“… but you’re a coward, aren’t you?” He waved the knife before the Preceptor’s unseeing eyes. “You and your discredited philosophies that have left us at the mercy of our enemies, denied us the advantages of our power, reduced us to tricksters, hardly better than these shallow, ignorant creatures from the other world. I’ll not have it. Do you hear me? I’ll fight you with every voice and heart I can muster to my cause.”