Carol Berg - Daughter of Ancients

She stood on the rocky pinnacle, hands upraised, wind gusts whipping her hair, sleeves, and trousers. Her fingers were spread wide as if to reach the thick clouds threaded with darkening fire. As I struggled up the last near-vertical pitch, a faint white glow pulsed from her fingertips and faded to gray wisps, indistinguishable from the cloud. A despairing sob racked her slim back.

"D'Sanya."

She whirled. "How can you be here?" she cried, as if fate had betrayed her once too often.

She cupped her trembling hands between us, but no ball of fire appeared, only a smudge of gray that drifted upward. Tears and raindrops dribbled down her cheeks.

"I don't know how it's possible." I climbed the last few steps, treading carefully on the barren rock, the wind a constant threat to my balance. "Perhaps because I am not your enemy. Please believe I'm not here to hurt you. We must talk, just for a little while. Find a solution to this disaster."

"They're all dying," she said. "You took my rings and pendant, destroyed the oculus and the orbs, too, and now I can't help them. The worlds . . . the people . . . are my responsibility. If I could just clear away this storm . . . the chaos …"

She raised her hands again. A thin, wavering thread of white fire stretched from her hands to a looming cloud. The thick gray wad exploded into more droplets of mist that pricked my exposed skin like needles. Yet, for the moment, I could not heed anything but the landscape that sprawled before us. It halted my breath.

From the base of the mountain to the horizon unfolded all of Gondai, the ocher-and-bronze wastelands centered by the lush green and brilliant white of the fertile Vales and the snowcapped Mountains of Light. Blue-gray oceans rippled at its boundaries. In its very heart huddled the dark blight of Avonar, burning and dying. From that once-bright center dark veins of poison spread into the green lands and the red-brown desert, carrying sepsis to the whole of the land.

If I turned a little to the right, I saw what was surely the mundane world spread out as far as I could see, uncountable cities and villages, mountains and plains— a land trapped in unending winter. Tree boughs sheathed in ice and bent to breaking, grain fields buried in snow, mill wheels frozen, cattle and sheep dead or starving. Bands of ragged men and women rampaged through villages and towns, tearing, burning, killing, ravaging cellars and grain stores. Whole cities were ablaze.

Yet another turn and I gazed out on my chosen homeland of black-and-purple sky, the dark landscape jeweled with golden light—the precious sunrocks that signaled life and growth. Torrential rains battered my virgin world. A cliffside gave way, drowning a cluster of towers in an ocean of mud. One by one the points of light winked out.

In the gap of gray sky cleared by D'Sanya's work another cloud already swelled with coming chaos. I wished desperately to turn my back on this wondrous and terrible display, for I had no faith that even my dreadful solution could heal any of it. "D'Sanya, you must stop. The Bridge is broken. Irretrievably corrupt—"

Her fist gripped my heart. Searing, grinding pain began in my chest and threatened to encompass the universe. As I countered her spell, forced to focus all my power to stay living, the distant, brilliant heart of the Bounded, a yellow ocean of living light, dimmed and faded. "Lady, wait," I gasped. "Please listen to me. . . ."

"This is all your doing!" she yelled, sobbing angrily while blasting another cloud from the sky. Immediately a new cloud bulged in its place, darker and thicker. The rain scalded my skin. "You're destroying my father's work."

I had to stop her. But even after all she'd been through, her power was daunting. Choking on bile and blood as heart and lungs struggled, I struck with the only weapon sure to draw blood. "Do not call D'Arnath father, D'Sanya. Didn't you guess? He disinherited you. Disowned you. Struck your name from the—"

"Liar!" Her hand cracked into my cheekbone. The shrill edge of her scream spoke of long suspicion and denial.

I grabbed her wrist and held her tight, gathering power and weaving enchantment into the words Jen had given me. "This is the writing of Mu'Tenni the Speaker, bound to Truth, in the matter of King D'Arnath's girl child lost in the great war . . ."

To my surprise, the words came not in a choking rasp, but in a stern, clear voice that sounded more like my father than like me.

" For after the Catastrophe made grim the days, the King's favor rested upon his youngest heir above all others in his realm for the solace she brought him …"

A story undeniable in its truth. Did my enchantment make it so, or was it the power of the words as the Speaker had written them, or, perhaps, some magic of the one who had passed the words to me? D'Sanya stood paralyzed, one hand pressed to her lips, her hair limp and streaming with hot rain.

". . . Yet the King dared not allow the Lords' captive to inherit his power and the fate of the Bridge. Indeed her talent had come mightily as he had foreseen, and she

had become a sword in the Lords' hands, striking at the very soul of the Dar'Nethi. Came the day when D'Arnath saw the vile neck binding the Lords used to enslave his people and reive their souls, and knew that his own child had devised it, he wept bitter tears for that child of his heart and struck her name from his life and descent forever …"

As I described Prince D'Alleyn's refusal to speak her name on his deathbed, D'Sanya sank to the ground at my feet, her hands clamped over her ears, flinching as if each word were a blow. When I finished, she drew up her knees and bent her head over them.

"Papa . . . why won't you come for me? I said I'm sorry. So sorry. I did my best. For so long I wouldn't listen to their horrid tales. I sang and I wrote and I drew. But the days were so long … so lonely . . . and you didn't come. . . ." She raised her head and peered into my face, twisting her own countenance into a childlike puzzle. "The Three made me do dreadful, disgusting things with them . . . and with the Zhid . . . and do other horrid, wicked things that made people scream. They said that if Papa truly loved me, he would come and take me home where I wouldn't have to hear the screaming. I tried so hard. . . ."

"I know. It wasn't fair at all." I crouched in front of her and grasped her cold, limp fingers that had woven white fire. "D'Sanya, we have to destroy the Bridge. The worlds are dying."

She shook her head and wrapped her arms about her knees, shrinking from me. "I won't betray him. I won't. I won't. I won't. He'll come for me. He is the High King of Gondai, and he loves me as the earth loves the sky. He would never leave me in this awful place. .. . Papa?" Blood leaked from the cuts I had left on her hand. She licked the blood, leaving scarlet smudges on her lips, shuddered in pleasure, and rested her head on her arms, releasing neither sobs nor wails, but a low keening that was the very essence of misery and madness.

I had run out of time to think or to analyze or to seek counsel or solace or the encouragements of love and faith that had carried me through my most difficult decisions of the past. D'Sanya's anointing had changed the course of our decline from a downward slope to a precipice, and we were very close to smashing against the hard bottom. I had to choose.

Standing on that mountaintop in the driving wind and knife-edged rain, I looked out on the lands joined by the Bridge and saw no alternatives.

Destroyer . . .

I ignored the sly whisper and bent my mind to the work, focusing instead on a clearer voice, one given its rich timbre by strength and courage and a trust uncolored by blood ties or friendship. A voice that spoke truth. Consider the object to be destroyed… the need. .. the use or misuse that justifies destruction . Not difficult at all. I had been thinking of nothing else for two days.