Carol Berg - Daughter of Ancients

He nodded, his serious expression unchanged. "Truth broke her. I should have let you face her long ago."

Unable to comprehend his meaning, I could not remember what I was saying. "I don't know any more to tell you. Someone's bringing food and medicine. We'll look at your shoulder."

"Just cold now." He hunched his quivering shoulders and averted his eyes. "Thank you … for believing."

"But I didn't—"

"Felt it the whole time. Remembered what you said; didn't hold back."

So he had used my advice to destroy the Bridge. I wanted to throw something, to explode something. But all I did was yell at him. "How could you do it? I defended you! Yes, I believed in you, but I don't know why, and I still believe in you, but I think I must be mad or corrupt, a traitor to everything and everyone I've ever cared about. Tell me why you did it!"

He swung his legs around to the side of the bed, set his bare feet on the floor, and sat up, chin drooping on his chest as he gathered the bedclothes around him. His eyelids sagged as his violent shaking eased into gentler tremors. For a few moments, I thought he had passed out and might topple onto the floor. I dared not touch him.

After a brief time, he heaved a deep, tremulous sigh. Shrugging off the blankets, he reached for the muddy leggings and boots I had left by the bed.

"I did what I believed necessary," he said, pulling the black hose over his legs with hands that were increasingly steady. "But I don't have time to explain right now. They're going to come for me—the Dar'Nethi, the Preceptors . . . whoever's left. I'll let them do whatever they want with me. I'll help, if they'll allow it… if I can. But I must get to the hospice first. My father's dying."

"Are you going to play Lord again? Have you forgotten the firestorm you brought down on Avonar? The Zhid legions that stretch like an ocean all the way to the borders? How do you expect—?"

His glance halted my accusations as decisively as he cinched the buckle on his left boot. His face shone like the horizon just before the sun pushes itself above its boundary. "Just now I ordered the Zhid to stop the attack. No one answered me."

I caught my breath. "Then the avantir is—"

The door slammed inward, bouncing against the wall. Gerick dived into the curtained alcove behind the bed. I had a chair in my hand before the tall man in the black, hooded cloak could drop two bulging leather saddlebags to the floor and stretch his long arms out to either side.

"It's all right. Just me. Everything's all right." He shook off his hood. Paulo.

He caught the chair before it crashed to the floor, and when I flung my arms about his waist and burst out crying like a ridiculous schoolgirl, he wrapped his long arms about me and allowed me to dampen his apparel even more than it was already. "I guess it's been a rough night for everyone."

After a moment I felt the need to regain a bit of self-respect and reassure Paulo that I hadn't suddenly misinterpreted our friendship. Though my arms seemed unwilling to relax their hold, I swallowed sharply and forced my voice even. "Aimee's well?"

"She's off to the palace with Je'Reint and Ven'Dar. You just can't imagine what all she can do." No worries that his attentions had been diverted from brave, insightful Aimee. The new note of assurance in his admiration, an air of privileged knowledge, almost had me smiling.

He waved at the empty bed. "Where's—?"

"Knew you'd get our backs—you and that excessively cheerful lady."

The voice from the alcove spun Paulo out of my grasp and brought a grin to his face. "Knew you'd get into trouble without me. But, demons of the deep, I never thought . . ."

Paulo's smile faded as Gerick kept his distance. Gerick's expression had lost its luster as well. Though his words expressed genuine relief, his body was wary.

Paulo hesitated. "You're all right? You look a right bloody mess. I heard she stabbed you."

"A small thing." Gerick waved at his shoulder halfheartedly. "They've sent you to fetch me, haven't they?"

Paulo breathed deep. "I offered to speak with you. There's a number of folk downstairs waiting. Wicked upset. Needing to understand what's happened and why and what's going to happen next."

"I've got to ride north first, Paulo. My father—"

"You can't go. There's some down below as want to bring this house down on your head no matter who's with you or what questions will never be answered. There's some as would have you trussed up in so much dolemar it would look like plate armor, and locked away in Feur Desolй with your mind like frog spit before you take two breaths more. You set foot in a direction they don't like and they'll do it, no matter what you might do to them in return. Ven'Dar has pledged his word that before the next hour passes you'll answer for what you've done without so much as bending a hair on another man's head."

"Ven'Dar had no right to do that." Gerick turned away from us to face the window. He ran his fingers through his matted hair. "If my father isn't dead already, then he's got only hours left. I've killed him, Paulo, and I've got to tell him why. I've got to tell him what I learned . . . what I felt . . . how I tried to make things right even though I've destroyed everything he fought for. I'll do whatever they want after, but he has to know before he goes."

Paulo walked up behind him. Closer than anyone else in the world would dare go just now. "He knows, my lord … my good lord. If he felt you inside him—holding on to him, protecting him, giving him strength to survive that upheaval last night—the same way I felt it, the same way Aimee did—"

"Yes! That's exactly what I felt," I blurted out.

Paulo dipped his head toward me as he continued. "—then he understands all he needs to know. He doesn't want you dead, and he'd hate for these good people to bear the burden of killing the one who saved them after all."

Long moments passed. Gerick's shoulders were still.

"It's not fair," he said at last. "My head must already be filled with frog spit. The only morsel of power I managed to scrape together here at the end of everything, and I used it to test the avantir. I could have used it to tell him goodbye."

Paulo had brought wine, water, bread, bandages, towels, a clean white shirt for Gerick, and a clean green tunic for me. I didn't complain that the tunic bagged out of my vest and reached all the way to my knees as if it were an elder brother's. Rather I almost fell into overe-motional foolishness again at the thought of washing my face. Perhaps if I could get clean, I could form a clear thought.

When Paulo asked if I could warm the washing water, I clenched my dead fingers as if I could hide their incapacity. I told him my mother had taught me that cold washing was healthier. He very kindly did not refute the lie by mentioning my adamant insistence on hot water for cleansing Gerick's wounds back in the desert.

After we had washed and changed, we sat in the middle of the patterned rug and shared out the provisions. Paulo left the food to Gerick and me, as he had eaten more recently, but he shared the wine and gave us a brief summary of his adventures while we ate.

Evidently Aimee had raised an image of witness so harrowingly clear and indisputable that Je'Reint and his commanders had been jolted into immediate action. Je'Reint's legion had ridden to the succor of Avonar through half a day and most of a night without stopping. From Paulo's account, I estimated that the Dar'Nethi had fallen on the Zhid from the rear only a few hours after Gerick had broached the Gate fire.

"We found more Zhid out there than flies in a dairy herd," Paulo said, "but everyone marveled how so few Zhid were already inside the walls. Most of the Zhid were still in their camps, waiting for orders to move. Some said a Lord was commanding the Zhid. . . ."