Carol Berg - Daughter of Ancients

Now, ownership … I, who had been born in one of these encircling worlds, nurtured and corrupted in another, and given, in the third, the first inkling of the reason for my own being, could well assert my ownership of this place.

Disrupt containment . The flaw in the Bridge was already there for me to exploit. I settled myself on the ground beside D'Sanya and touched her hair. Forgive me, Lady .

She did not look up.

My soul moved quickly into her body, reaching through the harrowing morass of guilt and denial to find the hidden link with the Bridge—a silver thread buried deep, long tarnished, the bent and broken fragment of her father's working. I took it from her and felt her last defenses crumble. I wove that flaw into my spell of breaking, then withdrew, grieving for the cold and lonely barrenness of a spirit once so bright.

As soon as I had reclaimed my own senses, I gathered power. Yes, Jen'Larie, as you taught me — everything I feel, everything I am, everything I remember . I reached into the deepest places of my soul and fed power into my enchantment. . . .

The air about me shimmered as if I viewed the triple landscape through the heat haze of the desert. I opened my arms and spread my legs and raised my head, allowing the power to flow through me unhindered, a torrent sufficient to drain an ocean of magic. Too quickly I was struggling with the effort, my extended arms quivering, my knees threatening to collapse. And nothing had happened.

Gods, had I not worked the spell correctly? I'd been so sure I could do this. The enchantments of the past days, of the battle—portals and threats and deceptions had been so easy once I had opened myself to the past. Yet D'Arnath's Bridge had taken twenty-one years to build . . . the extent of my whole lifetime. How could I imagine I could destroy it in one moment or one hour or one day?

Best be ready for a long siege . Using the discipline I had learned in Zhev'Na, I spread my fingers, angled my feet, and settled more deeply into my position. With eyes closed, I set free memories and visions to come and go in my head. Comigor . . . Verdillon . . . Zhev'Na . . . the Bounded … I felt and lived and embraced past and present.

Creeping darkness threatened to suffocate me…. Madness lurked in the shadows . … I held on. Gave more. There passed what seemed like an age of the world. . ..

Cold … As you can only feel when exhaustion saps the last of your inner fire. Dizzy . . . and so thirsty . . . I'd not had a sip of anything for hours. The rain had stopped, but a warm flow tickled my chest and side— my shoulder bleeding again. Would the end of the world be halted by a damnable puncture wound?

I croaked and gasped in some grotesque semblance of laughter at the irony, terrified to the marrow that I might fail and equally fearful of success. Then a blast of wind almost collapsed my knees. The mountaintop trembled. A skull-cracking barrage of sound, like the cannon fire of a year-long siege compressed into a single moment, had me fighting for composure. Yet the noise did not stop after that initial blast, but grew louder, a grinding cacophony. D'Sanya flung her arms about my ankle and wailed.

The gale howled in concert with the Lady; the sky itself spun. Fragments of color broke away from the landscape—the bright green of new grass . . . the red-gold of autumn leaves . . . the translucent blue-green of forest ponds—each of a thousand shadings one by one, and a many-textured darkness began to close in over the sprawling worlds. Destruction . . . chaos . . . the terror, panic, and madness of thousands of souls tore my flesh and shredded my mind. . . .

Rent . . . shattered … I could not breathe. My bones cracked; my blood surged through its course like liquid fire. Once, in some other age of creation, I had experienced such agony. On my twelfth birthday, as I escaped Zhev'Na. On that day I had abandoned this physical shell when it became uninhabitable.

Coward, not to face what you've done . Despite the exhortations of conscience, I could not hold, and yet again my soul fled my body, seeking the oblivion I could not grant my victims. Alone . . . groping through the chaos of unending night to find some anchor … I touched something wet and gritty . . . mud . . .

. . . and saw two Singlars climbing a steep, spiral stair and clutching their casket of sunrocks as roiling floodwaters crept up the stair behind them. One of them tall and dark-skinned with silver hair. The other short and oddly shaped with only one eye. My friends, Zanore and Vroon, and my kingdom, the Bounded, in all their awkward newness . . . how I loved them. Hold on . . . don't die. .. .

I reached farther through chaos and touched ice. . . . . . . and glimpsed a woman with dark braids wound about her head, huddled with a man and two feverish children in a tiny, snow-covered house beside a frozen river — Kellea, who had helped rescue me from Zhev'Na and who had cared for my father. And a little farther on I found Tennice, my tutor and second father, coughing blood from his lungs in ice-bound Verdillon. And Roxanne, riding through drifted roads to succor her frost-wracked cities and towns with bread, ale, fire, and courage . . . giving . . . giving . . . Friends who gave their gifts so generously for love and duty and right, expecting no reward but hope. The mundane world, filled with monumental cruelties that made its passionate kindnesses so savory. . . . I loved it, too. Hold on . My mother's world . . .

Where was she? Clutching my connections to these two worlds, I returned to chaos, letting it flow in and out of my disembodied soul, searching. . . .

. . . and found a tall man and a golden-haired woman who clutched his waist, the two astride a strong-limbed bay that raced through the night toward a burning city, leading a dark-skinned warrior and his army of sorcerers. Ah, Paulo . . . long past time for you to take your own road . . . ride swiftly . . . safely . . .

" Your mother was very persuasive." Jen'Larie . . . a force of nature inducing me to smile in a time I believed I would never smile again. Power lay hidden in her that she herself could not see . . . .

Hidden power. . . my mother, too, had her own magic, as on that day in Zhev'Na when the Great Oculus scalded my eyes away and I heard her voice, distant, but clear: "You were beloved from the day your father and I first knew of you . …" Mother ? I shaped a talisman of that voice and spirit until I found her.

She sat in the grass under failing stars. He lay huddled in her strong arms, crying out his agony. Dry-eyed, she whispered comfort, building a shield of love around his pain.

Ah, Mother, do you know how you are loved? We lived inside of him. I know. If I could but feel half that love for someone. . . Whatever else, D'Sanya had taught me possibility.

And, Father, how I wish I could make this easier for you. . . .

As if he had heard me, an ember of my father's spirit flared in the darkness, penetrating chaos as it had once penetrated the Breach, as it had echoed beyond the Verges, as it had touched my soul on the day I became the Fourth. The memory of those words still gave me strength. I will fight them until the last day of the world to set you free .

How could I do less? I embraced my mother and father, along with Paulo and Aimee, Jen and D'Sanya, and through them all the world of Gondai—Dar'Nethi and Dulce and Zhid, good and bad together. I enfolded all those spirits, together with the Singlars and the mundanes and the other two worlds, and I held them tight and fought to set them free, wishing I could do more as the last of my power drained away and I became one with chaos.