Carol Berg - THE SOUL WEAVER

I remembered Gerick listening intently in Verdillon’s garden. Arms folded. Expression unreadable… as it was so often. No, I won’t believe it.

“Four traps remain unsprung, their mythical prizes unclaimed. The fifth was ingenious, I think.” His hollow laugh was worse than his rage. “I told him that Jayereth had left transcripts of her work hidden in an abandoned bathhouse in Lyrrathe Vale. I said that the secret of nullifying mordemar had not died with her, but would remain hidden there until I named her successor, telling him that he needed to know these things in case anything happened to me. Then, I set a watch on the bathhouse. I willed the cache to remain untouched, Seri. I prayed to be left with unfathomable mystery, rather than unimaginable betrayal, and on each day that passed, I gave thanks. But yesterday I named the Alchemist Mem’Tara to the Preceptorate, saying she would take up Jayereth’s work. And last night, the fifth trap was sprung.”

“But Gerick was here in Montevial with me. It’s impossible.”

“The Lords never dirty their own hands. They use others: Some are tools who do evils of their own will, some like the Zhid have been transformed, and some” - he almost spat as he said it - “they inhabit. They can abandon their own bodies, insinuate themselves into a man and displace his soul, leaving it a cowering, silent witness to the evils they do. They take on his life as their own, reaping the harvest of his senses so as to savor his fears and pleasures, controlling his movements and deeds for their own purposes. You would think the boy merely asleep. But when our son possessed another’s body and came to the Ravien Bathhouse, ready to destroy Jayereth’s work before it could be used, I was waiting and I recognized him.”

I was fascinated and horrified together. This story could have no relation to the boy I helped with school lessons and comforted when he had nightmares - serious, reserved, unsure of his place in a world he was only beginning to understand. Uneven in temper, yes, but so had I been at sixteen. Yet last night he had slept for the first time in days… weeks… Karon’s cold anger battered me like a storm tide, drowning my feeble protests, choking me with his horror and conviction.

“I wanted to kill him then,” he said, his jaw rigid. “So we are taught in Avonar: Kill the possessed body and you will kill the possessing soul before it can return to its own body. The host is left dead when the Lords are finished with him anyway. But Lord Dieste had chosen his host well, and I hesitated. It was Gar’Dena, you see, that came to the Ravien Bathhouse. No living soul but Gerick knew the hiding place. But Gar’Dena came and spoke the word that was supposed to open Jayereth’s cache, the very word I had told Gerick and no other. Before I could convince myself to slay Gar’Dena’s body, the Destroyer abandoned him and left him dead. Our dear friend, the good and generous man who helped save our lives, plunged a dagger into his own heart.”

“Gar’Dena… no… ”

Karon’s voice was on the verge of breaking, but, instead, he roared and snapped the branch from the alder tree. Launching it into the trees where it crashed to the ground, shredding leaves and twigs on its way, he turned and confronted me again, scarcely containing himself. “This time the Destroyer will not escape me. No matter whose shape he wears, I will close my eyes and see Jayereth’s torment and mad Gar’Dena shedding his own blood, and my sword will find its mark. Do you understand, Seri? He was able to stretch his arm across the Breach. Powers of night, I’ve told him the defenses of Avonar.”

I could not accept it. Gerick had rejected his perverse nurturing in Zhev’Na. He had given up immortality because he would not harm us. “Talk to him, Karon. This is impossible. A mistake. Perhaps it was really Gar’Dena after all… turned Zhid… a vicious trick of the Lords. What of the sixth? You said there were six who knew the secrets. Perhaps that one - ”

“The sixth was you.”

My heart sank like lead in a pool.

Karon gripped my shoulders and glared at me until my head came near cracking. “I say again, Seri, where is he?”

Of course, Karon would recognize Gerick no matter what form he wore. He had shared Gerick’s mind for hours working at his healing. And he was right. There would be no containing one of the Lords outside of death itself. Yet my heart ripped and bled and wept at the vision of Gerick curled up in boyish sleep in this beloved place… and Karon plunging his sword…

As if that very sword had cloven my skull, for one moment a suffocating fury engulfed my mind. My mouth opened to scream with anger that was not my own. And then it was gone, leaving me drained and empty and helpless.

“So he lies in the gatehouse! Oh, powers of night, we are at Windham… ” Karon had stolen my thoughts. His shoulders sagged, as if the fury had left him. He shook his head, closed his eyes, and spoke softly. “Ah, Seri. I am so sorry.”

But then he shoved me aside and ran up the path, sword drawn and death in his stride. Our son’s death.

“Karon, wait!” This could not be happening, not after so much pain and so much hope.

A sliver of yellow moon hung low in the east. I ran for the gatehouse, leaving the broken path and cutting straight across the vast wilderness of Windham’s gardens, stumbling over weeds and rocks in my hurry to reach Gerick before his father could. But I was too tired and too slow, my thoughts shredded like hay under the scythe. In the distance I heard a bellow of rage.

“Karon, no!” I screamed, running onward, ducking tree branches that seemed to get thicker and lower the farther I ran. “Gerick, run!”

A musty cellar gaped before me, its floor a mat of rotted leaves, bare roots crumbling its walls, its wooden doors rotted away. I teetered on the edge, then backed away and forced my way through a bramble thicket that tore at my clothes and my arms.

Odd, tittering laughter burst out somewhere to my right. “Who’s there?”

How could anyone laugh? The incongruity brought me to a halt. Was this a dream, my own nightmare, peopled by shades of princes and queens and houses and gardens, stories that made no sense, Gerick a murderous deceiver, Karon, my gentle Healer, in this bloodthirsty rage? A dream, that had to be it.

I pushed through a wall of sprangling lilac bushes. In the center of a circle of alders stood four men. I called them men. No other name that might serve came to mind. One of the four was incredibly thin, his naked, sinewy body colored the pure black of ebony. His hair was silver, his huge eyes burning amber like fireflies in the summer garden. He was half again as tall as the tallest man I had ever seen. The second man was as broad as three blacksmiths together. His skin brown and leathery, his hair red tufts springing from an oddly rounded skull, and he was badly stooped, his hands almost dragging the weedy ground. The third was a bearded man no taller than my waist, perfectly formed except for the skin grown over one eye socket. The three of them were exactly as the queen had described them to me, exactly as the terrified citizens of the Four Realms had described them to Maceron. They were laughing, as I could see by the greenish light of a lamp carried by the leathery man. The fourth person stood with his back to me.

“Who are you?” I said. “What are you doing here? Sword of Annadis! Tell me this is a dream.”

The odd trio greeted me with more hilarity. In a burst of green light the three men vanished, leaving only their laughter and their fourth companion behind. He whirled about, squinting as he peered into the darkness. Gerick.

I wanted to touch him, to reassure myself that he was my son whose pain I could ease. I wanted to tell him I still had faith in him and that I knew these accusations were all a mistake. But he stayed back, his wary eyes fixed on my hands, and I realized that in my fear and confusion I had snatched my knife from its sheath.