Carol Berg - Son of Avonar

You must tell my friends that they will ever be in my thoughts, and for any who go traveling, may the road be filled with nothing but beauty.

Highest regards,

Your cousin,

Seri

It was not enough, but what could possibly be enough to tell them what I wished? They would read between the lines.

Year 1 in the reign of King Evard

I plunged immediately into the social life of the court, renewing girlhood friendships I had abandoned when I had begun attending Martin’s salons. I found it ironic that I was supposed to find the “decorum” Tomas so prized in the drunken revelry of idle nobles who could converse on no topic more serious than who was whose mistress, and what were the prospects for the fall campaign, and weren’t last year’s vintages the most bloody awful in history.

But between afternoon feasts, hunting parties, and evening entertainments, I read and studied furiously. Until the years at Windham I had never been studious, preferring a ride across the downs to reading a book or a game of draughts to composing an essay. Even at Windham, my scholarship had been mostly confined to avid listening, unschooled argument, and persistent questioning. Only Tennice’s challenge had sent me to reading. But now that I was deprived of that company, I discovered a hunger for knowledge that I could ease nowhere but in books. In the back of my mind I held fast to something Tennice had mentioned in passing, that one or two women had been allowed to study at the Royal University in Valleor. To make something different of my life… I liked that idea. Things more unlikely had come about.

I also hired an elderly gentleman to teach me to play the flute. He was a drunkard, but in the rare times he came without spirits on his breath, he could sear the soul with the beauty of his music. He said he drank because no one would listen. I listened, and I learned.

One morning, as I sat in my library studying a history of the Four Realms, Darzid came to visit. “Just to discover how this new life suits you,” he said. “No need to stop what you’re doing.”

He settled in a chair by the window and seemed to mean what he said. He browsed through the stack of books I had left beside the chair: one on law, one on philosophy, one on the history of Valleor that I was devouring with new eyes, hunting any mention of Avonar. The task of opening a conversation was left to me. The trouble was, I was far more interested in what I was reading. The tattered book in my hand purported to recount the history of “the reign of horror and the noble restoration” some four and a half centuries in the past. I purposely did not offer Darzid any refreshment and did not move from my library table to a chair that might facilitate our conversation.

“You must report to Tomas that I appear comfortable and well fed, and I do not seem to be moping for the loss of his companionship or Evard’s.”

“Mmm.” He thumbed idly through one of the books, but I didn’t think he was reading it.

It was tedious to make conversation when you had no heart for it. “So, Captain, are you finding sufficient fodder for your character sketches, since Tomas has dragged you so high? Have you decided to write them down as you threatened? I think the kingdom could do with a good laugh now the war has taken up again.”

“The world is absurd. I—” He broke off, threw the book on the table, and sat back, tapping his long finger rapidly on the arm of the chair. Though his dress was as sleek as ever, Darzid didn’t look well. The sunny window at his back left his haggard face in shadow. The mischievous glint was gone.

I waited for him to resume his thought. He was not one to dance about a topic or adhere to polite protocols. But the silence stretched so long and so heavily, I felt compelled to say something. “Captain, why are you here?”

A hint of his sardonic smile flashed across his face. “I’ve missed our dinner conversations. Every fishwife in this city knows of your estrangement from your brother, thus they refuse to seat me next you. You’ve always brought out my best humor.”

“So, is it court life or soldiering that’s quenched it?”

“Truth to tell, I’ve not been sleeping well.” He drew up to the edge of his chair and leaned forward. “Tell me, lady, do you ever have the sense that you belong somewhere else? That your life has taken a course you cannot explain?”

“On occasion,” I said. Certainly on the night I had learned that the society I believed built on honor had perpetuated a horrific lie—that sorcerers were universally evil and deserved to die in torment. “Usually when I am at some baroness’s masque—”

“No, no. This is something else.” A gold chain hung about his neck, its links gleaming in the sunbeams. “I visited a village in the far north of Valleor last month, a place where I’ve never been. The people of the village claimed to know me. To detest me. Old people swore they’d met me in their youth. I thought it an oddity, but at three other villages in the district, it was the same. My lady, they told me of a duel fought there thirty years ago. I killed a local man, they said, a man well regarded in their district. They described the combat in detail. I scoffed at the tale, but they swore to it, mentioning a star-shaped scar left on my shoulder from the incident. I told them it was nonsense, of course. Tomas got a great laugh.”

“But you’re not laughing.” Indeed he was as serious as I’d ever seen him.

“I have such a scar on my shoulder, exactly as they described it.” Absentmindedly, Darzid rubbed his left shoulder, as if some ghost pain bothered him.

“Coincidence. You’re a Leiran soldier. You have a number of scars, I’m sure. And every Vallorean hates every Leiran ever born.”

“But, strangely enough, I can’t tell you where I got this particular scar. The whole matter got me thinking. There are a number of things I can’t remember: stories of my family, my career, that I’ve told so often they seem true, and yet when I turn my mind to them, they vanish like movements you see only out of the corner of your eye.” He stared at his hands and the ugly burn scars that crossed his palms. “And there are images floating in my head that have no place there, images that have the truth of memory, and yet are so fantastical…” He shook his head as if to rid himself of those very thoughts. “Foolishness. You must think me drunk.”

“Why are you telling me these things?”

He forced a laugh. “I’ve no one else to tell of my fancies. Tomas and Evard are quite single-minded, and everyone else in this kingdom gets the megrims from such talk. But you sit here wide-eyed and act as if you hear such mysteries every day. I knew you’d not laugh at me. You are exceptional…”

I’d never seen such a look on Darzid’s face—unmasked admiration… a request for intimacy…

I stood up abruptly. This conversation was going somewhere I didn’t want to go. “I’m sorry I can’t hear the whole story, Captain. But for now, I’m in the middle of some work…” I waved at my book and a stack of papers on my desk.

Face scarlet, he leaped to his feet and called my butler for his cloak. “My apologies, my lady. I had no wish to make you uncomfortable.”

“This thing with Tomas will pass.” I said. “We’ll sit at many a tedious dinner where you can tell me more.” His story was indeed curious, but I had no need and no desire for intimacy with an ambitious courtier. Those entrusted with mortal secrets had to be careful about intimate relationships.

In a flurry of farewells and deprecating humor, he took his leave. “If Tomas fails to come to his senses and you find this studious life as boring as a dinner party, perhaps you will invite me back sometime and restore my wit.”