Carol Berg - Son of Avonar

“The boy had been wild and incorrigible from the day of his birth, but intelligent, certainly, and strong-willed and courageous beyond his years. When his father and brothers died, he suddenly had demands on him: to act like a prince, to understand the war, to do those things you call magic. In their blind stupidity, the Preceptors could not see the worth of him and use his strength to encourage his best nature. As a result, D’Natheil excelled at swordplay and hand combat, but no heart developed alongside them. No wisdom or grace. Humility is a virtue we prize in our princes; Exeget, the pompous traitor, tried to beat it into him as if it was his fault he had received no teaching. When I first saw D’Natheil after my return from the Wastes, he had been forced to live out of doors for three days, unclothed in the most terrible winter weather, for refusing to bow to Exeget.” Dassine’s discourse was very like the spring storms that roll one after the other across the northern marches, each phrase a roiling intensity of disgust or bitterness or sorrow.

He glanced at me sharply. “You know of Exeget?”

I nodded.

“The boy preferred to shiver in his nakedness than to grovel before a fool. He hungered for war. By the time he was ten, some on the Council believed he was already a tool of the Zhid. Whatever the truth of that, the Bridge destroyed D’Natheil. When I carried him away from it, there was no soul left in him. An hour’s examination told me that the last Heir of D’Arnath was never going to save his people.”

“But if this was after Karon died, then how—?”

“Patience, madam!” said Dassine, rapping his staff on the floor in front of me. “The people were not told what their foolish Preceptors had done. While Avonar yet sang the triumph of the Exiles and the opening of the Gates, I sat by D’Natheil’s bedside and mourned the noble line of D’Arnath, and with him, our future and yours. You see, as a result of the long years of war, we Dar’Nethi had lost ourselves. Our princes had been trained more and more strenuously in the art of war, yet the Gates had remained closed and the Bridge had grown weaker. If only the Heir was like the one who had opened the Gate, I thought. All of us had felt the power of his enchantment—the will, the glory of his life’s essence. As I gazed on the deadness in D’Natheil’s eyes, I wondered how those eyes would appear if the light of such a life was reflected there.”

“Karon had not yet crossed the Verges,” I said, dragging at the traces of the old man’s story.

Dassine smiled crookedly. “It had only been three hours, three hours from exultation to despair. I was beside myself with anger, and so, there in my study, with D’Natheil half dead and the brave songs still echoing through the falling darkness, I sought through the ether for the one who had given everything to save us. Such souls do not cross the Verges quickly.”

“And you found him.” The wonder of it was almost unbearable.

“It wasn’t difficult to identify his among the souls that traveled that night. I summoned him and told him what I wanted—to return him to life in our prince. He refused. As long as there was life in the boy, he could not supplant it, he said. And L’Tiere beckoned, as it will for any who have left their physical being behind. But I bound him to an artifact of power and told him that I would do my best to heal D’Natheil. If I was successful, then I would release Karon to go beyond the Verges. But if the Heir had been irreparably damaged as I feared, then he, Karon, must live again as the Heir of D’Arnath.”

Dassine’s eyes glistened with tears, and he drew a clenched fist to his breast, lost in his storytelling. “At first he would beg me to let him go. The agony of his death was real to him at every moment of every day. I chided myself that in prolonging his torment, I had come to be no better than our enemies. But I could not release him; we had no one else. And so we waited. Ten years—”

I was overwhelmed with horror. “Ten years? You made him wait for ten years between life and death?” Ten years with no body—no light, no scent, no sound, no touch of wind or rain or human hand. Only the fire. How could any man do such a thing to another?

Dassine reached out his hand for me. I recoiled, but his piercing blue eyes held me, insisting I accept his truth. “You must believe that he came to accept this half-life I gave him. As we grew to know each other, he became involved in my work and the pain of his existence receded. Karon became an extension of my mind, and, had I not come to love him as my own son, I could have been tempted to enslave him in such a way forever. We could have rivaled the Lords of Zhev’Na in our combined power. But, instead, I learned of this world and of you, and in the plan that evolved in my head, I knew you had to play a part.

“I was ready to bring him into D’Natheil after only a year. The boy could eat, and speak, and fight as he always had, but there was no thought in his speech, no moral grounding to his combat. Even so, Karon would not consider it while D’Natheil yet lived, though it would have meant release from his own captivity.”

Dassine was no longer telling the story, but reliving it: the challenge, the awe at his own audacity and skill. “To pour the life essence of one man into the body of another is a deed of tremendous complexity, with immense risks and unfathomable implications. As the years passed, I devised the plan to take away all memory, so that the minimal functioning mind and the physical body could learn to work together. Over a period of months, I would carefully awaken each memory and do whatever was necessary to guide him through the difficulties of the joining. Karon consented, though I think the prospect of giving up his memories frightened him more than anything. It was you, you see. With all his being he desired to carry his memory of you beyond the Verges, and if I failed, he would be left with nothing. I promised that if we ever made the attempt, the first memory I returned would be something of you.”

Dassine dropped his voice, and I had to lean closer to hear him over the flames. “Six weeks ago events caught us up. Avonar was nearing its end. D’Natheil raged at the wards that bound him to my house. Given his freedom, he would not fail to be in the thick of battle. So I released the boy to his war. I stayed close, watched, and knew I was right. He stood tall and beautiful and soulless, and he slew fifty Zhid without thought, risking death without care. He turned the tide of that night’s battle, but not until he met a crafty Zhid who used a mind-destroying poison on his knife and left D’Natheil among the dying. I knew that poison… as I knew the Zhid who wielded it.”

“You murdered him!”

Dassine did not flinch at the word. “Some would say it. But I would not change the choice I made. Karon could refuse me no longer. Had he known what I’d done… well, I didn’t tell him. At the moment D’Natheil breathed his last, I brought Karon back in his place, erasing every memory of both minds at the same moment. Then did I receive due retribution for my sin. On that same morning of new hope, a Dulcé named Bendal came to me with the story of the traitors’ bargain with the Lords of Zhev’Na— to trade the Heir for D’Arnath’s lost weapons. They had decided that your world was not worth saving, and that ours could survive even without the Bridge, if we but had a royal talisman to protect Avonar. Traitorous fools.”

“So you sent him onto the Bridge before he was ready, before he even knew who he was.”

“I had to send him. Not to do so was to concede defeat. The Zhid were on the verge of closing the Gates, and I had no assurance we would ever be able to open them again. I could not accompany him, for if he failed, the last battle would be fought in Avonar, and my duty lay there. But I did not believe he would fail. You still lived. Karon taught me that the gift of the Dar’Nethi… the power for sorcery that lives in us… is life itself. He said that you were… are… and ever will be… the very essence of his magic.”