Carol Berg - Son of Avonar

I found Karon stretched out on his back in the grass, his arms behind his head, gazing upon the stars that were scattered like diamond dust on the black velvet sky. Not wishing to startle him, I approached quietly, and so I glimpsed the expression on his face before he was aware of me. Not fear. Not anxiety. Only yearning—the same hunger I glimpsed when he walked with me in the garden or at the times when he stepped back from our laughter in Martin’s drawing room and embraced our company with his eyes. In seeing him devouring the glory of that night, and in thinking of all I knew of him and all I had witnessed, both the essential question and its answer sprang up wholly formed in my head. I believed I might already understand what he would tell us.

I cleared my throat and sat down on the grass, wrapping my arms about my knees and waiting a moment to see if he would look around. He kept his eyes on the sky, but he blinked and shifted his arms protectively across his chest, so I knew he was aware of me. “You’re replenishing yourself,” I said, venturing my theory. “Replacing what you spent on Martin.”

“Yes.”

“That’s what it’s all about. What you are all about. Beauty, joy, friendship… these things you are able to cache within yourself… and then spend.”

“Life. All of it. Pain and sorrow are wonders, also. But, of course, beauty is easier.” He rolled to his side and propped his head on his hand, smiling as one will do to soften a hard truth.

“And the spending… is sorcery.”

“Exactly so.”

“I want to know. About you. About all of it. Why have we been so deceived?”

That sorcery equated with evil was a fundamental construct of the universe, a fact as sure as that time moved forward and not back. No history or science was required to prove it any more than history was required to say the earth was solid beneath our feet or the ocean fluid. Not only our priests condemned sorcery, naming it as one of the abominations of the earth that Arot had tamed in the Beginnings, but our kings and wise men, our mothers and grandmothers, men of science and warriors, believers and unbelievers agreed that it was a perversion of nature. Now, in one short hour everything had changed, and the gap in my knowledge of the world was so vast, so stark, I believed my head must cave in. This man and the healing I had seen him work were as far from evil as anything I had ever known.

Karon sat up and, after one quick glance at me, dropped his eyes and began picking at the grass. “I wanted to tell you—and the others—but because of how things were with you… your future… it made no sense. And then today, I should have sent you all away, but I didn’t even think of it. After so many years, not to think of it… Maybe it was because I wanted you to understand.” He shook his head wonderingly and expelled a quick breath. “I always thought it would be so hard to explain, but I should have known you would put the pieces together. Even Martin took a while to understand the connection you’ve just seen.”

Why was it that those of Martin’s circle were forever underestimating me? “I would imagine that Martin had neither the patience nor the incentive to observe you as closely as I have over the past two years,” I said. “There are some things at which a woman is an expert before she is eighty!”

The words came out more prim and bristly than I intended, but Karon burst out laughing and I felt myself consumed by his remarkable eyes. “Oh, gods, Seri, how I love you! What I wouldn’t give—ah!” He bit off his words and looked vexed. “Damn! My tongue will not keep still. My habits are all askew tonight.”

He jumped to his feet and offered me his arm, instantly sober and contained. “Come,” he said softly. “The others will remember all their training and believe I’ve eaten you.” I allowed him to pull me off the grass, but I did not take my eyes from him. Everything was changed yet again by that moment’s revelation. Though he avoided my gaze and swallowed his words as if to recall them, nothing would erase what I had just heard. Truth. As clear as the clean-washed night.

We strolled across the garden, up the steps, and into the library, but I might have been treading on cloud or water for all I knew. Only when we halted in the middle of the library did I wrench my eyes from Karon’s face. The others were staring at us, sipping brandy, and waiting. I could not think what they were waiting for.

“We thought perhaps you two had wandered into some other garden,” said Julia, her head tilted, peering at us thoughtfully.

“This exceptional young woman would not get lost in Hierant’s Maze,” said Karon, releasing my arm and immediately retreating toward the hearth. “She has been explaining her theories of sorcery to me.”

As I sank to the leather couch beside Julia, Martin widened his eyes and waggled his eyebrows at her. I felt the blood rise to my cheeks, but before my cousin could come out with whatever clever jibe he was concocting, Karon drew the group’s attention back in his direction. “So have you decided, sensibly, that I must be on my way?”

Oh yes, the grim reality of the night. Somehow I could no longer grasp it.

Tennice snorted. “Seri! You didn’t get even that far in almost an hour?” Everyone but Karon and I laughed, and my face flamed hotter.

“There was no time,” Karon said, clasping his hands behind his back. “The young lady was busy reading my soul and reciting to me its inner workings, telling me I must explain a few things more so as to advance her education.”

“Well,” said Martin, “since Seri was distracted from her task, I’ll tell you that these young lions have sworn on their lives and honor—and most importantly, their tongues—that your secret does not go beyond this room. They understand the consequences for you and for themselves if it should. So it’s up to you. We will take the risk of having you here. If you are willing to take the risk of our silence, then there’s no need for you to go.”

“I’ve traveled enough for the present,” said Karon, softly, and the great hand which had been clenching my heart and stomach released its grip.

Martin laid his hand on Karon’s shoulder. “If you’re to be with us for a while longer, and since I don’t think any of us are yet ready for sleep, then perhaps, as Seri suggests, it’s a good time to tell your friends the history they never learned.”

“As you wish.”

Another log was thrown on the fire. More brandy was poured. The two starving lamps winked out, leaving the pool of light from the hearth as the only illumination. Karon settled himself on the patterned rug and began.

* * *

“I am of a people whose name you’ve never heard spoken, though we believed the race of the J’Ettanne was once as numerous as the Valloreans with whom we came to share a language. Much of our history has been lost, and I’ve never heard any explanation of why we were born so different or whether at some time we had a land of our own. Our oldest stories say only that the J’Ettanne scattered throughout the Four Realms because they were constantly wondering what was beyond the next hill or past the next turn of the road. A J’Ettanni man and wife might labor to build a house and plant a crop, only to abandon them before the vines bore fruit, just because a day’s sunrise was so lovely that they wanted to see what might lie east of their land. Or another might move to the next town when he heard there was a minstrel there who had sung a new song of surpassing beauty. Our neighbors thought our wandering life odd, for they didn’t understand that the accumulation of experience is the essence of J’Ettanni power.”

The flames in the hearth set the shadows to dancing about the room.