Carol Berg - Daughter of Ancients

A brilliant white light flared out from his hands, almost blinding me.

"Hand of Vasrin!" he said, as the crystal wall took fire with his light. Pale green, rose, blue, and yellow danced through the peaks, facets, and crevices of the wall. "I scarcely gave it a thought!"

He closed his eyes, narrowed his brow and cocked his head as if he were listening. "What's that? I hear . . ." His eyes popped open. He grabbed my arm and dragged me to my feet. "We must get Gerick away from here. I don't know how to judge him, but others are coming in search of the Destroyer, and until we understand what's happened . . ."

"Where can we take him, my lord?"

"Let me try . . ." He pressed his hands together at his forehead and then spread them wide, and a portal gaped before us, revealing what appeared to be a plain, tidy bedchamber. Ven'Dar's jaw dropped. "So fast. I've never— Come, let's get him up."

Ven'Dar bearing his shoulders, I his feet, we carried Gerick through the portal and laid him on the narrow bed. Ven'Dar's complexion was flushed, but I didn't think the exertion of the move had caused his heightened color. Gerick was not so very heavy.

The prince gave Gerick a quick examination: head, arms, legs, back, and bleeding shoulder. He threw the wadded bloody shirt on the floor. "Though he's lost blood, the wound doesn't seem all that severe. All other injuries seem older."

Besides the bed and a scuffed wooden chest, the room held only a bare table, two chairs, a well-stocked bookshelf, and a patterned rug of green and yellow. Ven'-Dar's hands quivered as he rummaged in the chest and pulled out a faded blanket of brown and yellow stripes and a clean linen handkerchief.

He tied the handkerchief around Gerick's shoulder. "I'll send someone with food and wine. I doubt I can find a Healer, even if— But I'll send medicine at least. Bandages." His eyes raced over Gerick's huddled form. Reaching down, he yanked a knife from Gerick's boot. He shrugged as he stuffed it into my hand. "Am I right to assume that you're willing to stay here with him?"

I didn't like his air of excitement or the hint of a smile peeking out of his untrimmed beard as he spread the striped blanket over Gerick. Such reactions seemed an unsupportable frivolity in this precarious hour. "As I said before, my lord, if he's a Lord of Zhev'Na, then we're all in a stew. . . ."

". . . and if he is not… if the Lady has spoken some truth in her madness . . . then perhaps we find ourselves at a beginning, not an end. I'm beginning to think that's possible. I'm hearing things . . . sensing things . . . more every moment, even with so much uncertainty, such devastation. . . ." He straightened up, shook his head, and blew out a long breath. "But we've some anxious hours ahead, and if we're to protect him, I must get back before someone detects me here. This house is quite secure, this room more so. Keep him here if you can. As soon as I learn anything more, I'll speak with you, if you'll permit. . . ."

"Of course, my lord. I just … I can't mind-speak myself."

"I'd say you'd best not assume anything, at this point. Everything's changed." For a moment his face was distracted, as if he heard something else in the room. When he looked up at me again, his eyes had taken on a new spark, the web of fine lines about them smiling, though his bruised lips did not. "I feel young, Jen. I feel new."

Prince Ven'Dar stepped through the portal and it closed behind him.

What did he mean by that? Of course, everything was changed. I felt tired. I felt confused.

I moved across the room to the window. Proximity to Gerick seemed to garble my thoughts, and there was little I could do for him anyway. Hurt's ease, my mother's purification spell, needed three pure elements to create it. I didn't know where I could find anything clean or pure in this whole blighted universe.

Outside the tall window it was day, though billowing fog left the sun a gray disk as it hovered over a ghostly horizon—west, certainly, from the shape of it. Had the world truly spun a complete revolution since I'd stood in the colonnade and watched D'Sanya ride out of the palace? But then who would expect time to make sense? The Bridge had fallen, and the earth had shaken for so long my teeth felt loose in my head.

We seemed to be on the third or fourth floor of a large house. Below the window spread a wide lawn, hedges, and a long, low building painted white with a fenced yard behind it—a stable, perhaps. I yanked up the stiff old sash, stuck my head out, and inhaled . . . and started coughing. Smoke, not fog.

The city was quiet now, as it had not been those endless hours ago when Ven'Dar had made a portal to take us from Skygazer's Needle into the palace. By the time he had found loyal men to reinforce the weaknesses Gerick had revealed to me, the Zhid had brought up a ram to smash the palace gates. A few had made it past the walls and the enchantments and were battling the defenders. If an entire day had passed, then who had won the battle for Avonar? The silence and smoke shivered along my back. Perhaps everyone was dead.

Behind me, the bed creaked. I scraped my arm on the window frame in my hurry to look around.

Eyes still closed, Gerick had rolled to his side, clutching the blanket tight around his neck. His trembling shook the small bed and the floor. The striped blanket slipped slowly to the floor, exposing his sodden boots and breeches.

I felt helpless. What had he done to himself with his monstrous magics?

Idiot! This isn't enchantment or madness. He's lost a vat of blood, has likely not eaten or slept for two days, and is soaking wet . Enough to deplete anyone, even if he'd not just expended magical power unseen in ages of the world. He was freezing.

• I dragged off his boots and leggings and threw the blanket back over him. As I dug in the chest through books and bundles and spilled sonquey tiles in search of blankets and dry clothes, I tried to think what I might possibly say were he ever to wake up. Is it part of your devilish scheme to plant conviction of your innocence in my head along with your messages, your soul, and whatever else you see fit to put there? What perversion makes me so sure of you, even after you've broken the world? I hate this madness you've put in me, when I know I should put a knife in your heart again, and leave it this time. Tell me what, in Vasrin's mighty shaping, you've done to the world. To me .

The chest yielded only a man's linen—worn, but clean. No other clothes. No more blankets. I returned to the bed, and yanked and tugged the bedclothes trapped underneath him until I could flop the thick, slightly damp quilt and linen sheet over the top of the striped blanket. After a quick glance at his face to confirm he was yet insensible, I reached underneath the bedclothes to fumble with the waist buttons on his breeches.

A cold hand clamped around my wrist, twisting just enough that I was forced to let go of his clothes, kneel down beside the bed, and look him in the eyes—deep brown eyes, open pathways to a soul filled with painful questions.

"F . . . f . . . first things first." His teeth were chattering. "T . . . t . . . tell me what I am, Jen. Please. You always see the truth."

One might have thought the battle fires had reached this room and set my skin ablaze. Before answering, I retrieved my hand and sat back on my heels, putting slightly more distance between us so I could breathe. He relinquished my appendage without argument, but not so my eyes.

"I don't know what you are," I said. "The Bridge is no more. The Gate's gone dark. Some kind of barrier— crystal or glass—exists in its place. As to the world . . . the war … I don't know that either. Ven'Dar and I are alive, and we're not Zhid. For the moment, he is capable of using power. That's something at least. The prince says that others live. The Lady survived, but seems . . ."