Carol Berg - THE SOUL WEAVER

Gerick had already finished breakfast by the time I went downstairs the morning after Karon’s visit. I didn’t know whether he’d ever gone back to bed, but he always did exercises in the yard before his breakfast, so any sleeping he’d done would have been very short. In late morning I found him in the library, standing next to a small table on which lay an open book. He was running his fingers over the page, and he started when I wished him a good morning.

“Ah, just the person I need.” He grabbed my arm and dragged me to the large library worktable, patting a pile of manuscripts and papers. “You must rescue me. Tennice set me to read fifty pages on Leiran-Vallorean border disputes by tomorrow, but my Vallorean just isn’t good enough to make any sense of it. Do you have time to give me a boost?”

“Of course. But you must pay my fee first. You can guess I’m rabid to know about last night. Your father said the journey was uneventful… ”

Gerick’s face closed down and his whole body tightened, as always happened with any direct questioning. His hand on the stack of papers fell motionless. I would have sworn he had stepped away from me, though his feet had not moved. But then he shrugged his shoulders and glanced up, before quickly averting his eyes. “The Bridge was amazing, the crossing not half so fearful as I expected. Horrible things all around, but not touching me this time. Not inside me. It felt almost… familiar.”

I shuddered a little, recalling our journey out of Zhev’Na through the chaotic Breach.

“And the Gate… I’d never imagined it, the power of the enchantment. But it was a long journey for the short time we spent on the other side - less than an hour. He showed me his apartments, his private library, and a marvelous map of the whole world of Gondai that hangs in the air, so you can see the actual landforms and the mountains rising up from the plains. We walked down the passage to his lectorium, but he heard one of his Preceptors still working in there, so we didn’t go in. He hadn’t expected anyone to be about. We were out of time, anyway.”

He pulled a chair up close to the worktable and drew his papers toward him. “I’d best get to work now.”

“Thank you for telling me.”

“Mmm.” He dug a thick sheaf of papers from the stack. “Here’s what I was having trouble with… ”

We spent a pleasant hour with no further mention of the night’s adventure or his nightmare. When he had his task well in hand, I took up the letter I’d come to finish.

As the clock in the hall below us struck the noon hour, Gerick threw down his pen and shoved a rolled manuscript across the table. “That will have to be enough,” he said. “My eyes have gone crossways, and the pen’s gouged a ridge through my fingers.”

“I doubt you’ll suffer the ill effects for long,” I said. “It’s an important subject. Border disputes are blamed for every war between Leire and Valleor, but if you read the histories, you’ll see how much more there is to it. Leirans think of Valloreans as soft and corrupt. Valloreans think of Leirans as ignorant barbarians. Both are quite wrong. And someday you’ll recognize what a liberal-minded statement that is from your Leiran mother!”

“I don’t see what use it is for me to learn such things.” He stripped off his coat and threw it on a chair. “I’ll finish it later. I need to see what’s up in the stables.”

Leaving unspoken the motherly platitudes that came to mind, I returned to my own project. Peace, routine, care that did not smother, whatever we could of a normal upbringing in a gentleman’s house, that’s what we tried to provide for Gerick.

I instructed him in languages, composition, mathematics, “motherly” things like manners, and unmotherly things like the politics of the Four Realms. Tennice tutored him in philosophy, rhetoric, history, and law, and tried to speak with him of matters a sixteen-year-old boy might not wish to discuss with his mother. Paulo was his friend; Teriza, the housemaid, treated him with respectful distance; and thirteen-year-old Kat was his worshipper. He had been uncomfortable, at first, with the serving girl’s unremitting devotion, but her innocent charm had worn away enough of his reserve that he could accept her small services with a solemn and gracious demeanor. It seemed to help that Kat worshipped Paulo in exactly the same way.

The only area in which our regimen differed from that of most Leiran households was in its emphasis on the intellect at the expense of military training. As a boy at Comigor, Gerick had been provided with a fencing master, and it had been his childhood ambition to be a master of the sword as my brother Tomas - the man he had once believed to be his father - had been.

But Gerick had not touched a sword since leaving Zhev’Na. He had vowed to forego physical opposition of the Lords when he became one of them, and, to seal his oath, the Three had melted his weapon as it lay on his palms, scarring them horribly. Karon didn’t know whether Gerick’s refusal to take up the weapon again was based in the belief that using a sword in any way would be a violation of his vow - bearing arms against those he had sworn not - or whether the experiences of Zhev’Na had somehow made the sword repugnant to him. The question remained as yet another mystery Gerick could not or would not explain.

When, in my turn, I was ready to leave the library, I indulged a bit of curiosity. The book that had interested Gerick was a journal belonging to the late Professor Ferrante, a history scholar at the University in Karon’s student days and one of the few people in the Four Realms who had known that Karon was a sorcerer. Our friend Tennice had inherited this house when the professor was murdered by the Zhid. On the open page were Ferrante’s notes from a time twenty years past, scribblings of students’ names and assignments, notations of appointments and tutorials. I could see no item more interesting than the others, until I came to one near the bottom of the page.

K. unable to complete exposition of Cenadian glyphs due to climbing accident. Advanced him twenty diracs to hire a scribe until next funds from M. Warned him the wrist will knit crooked when he refused to have Ren Gordac see to it. Should have thought. It was his left. Unfortunate the boy can’t take care of it himself. How strange to have such skill. Stranger still to be unable to take advantage of it.

Gerick must have guessed the passage was about Karon in his student days, as I knew it was. Karon’s left arm had already been covered with scars, each one the mark of a healing he’d done and a telltale to anyone hunting evidence of sorcery. As I descended the stairs, I wondered if Karon still felt the ache in his left wrist when winter came, even though the bone was not the same one broken in the fall so long ago. How much of memory resides in the physical body and how much resides in the soul? That was another part of the lingering awkwardness between Karon and me; even after four years neither of us knew exactly how much of him remained. Surely if we had more time together, things would be easier.

The rest of the afternoon passed quietly as was usual at Verdillon. The stream of our life flowed peacefully here. I felt safe and hidden, despite the sullied hopes of the night.

After supper Tennice, back from Yurevan, challenged me to a game of chess. A grumbling Gerick returned upstairs to the library to finish his work, and Paulo headed back outdoors, leaving us alone in the sitting room.

Seri.

I looked up from the chessboard, but Tennice’s balding head was still bent over it. “What’s the problem?” I said. “Can’t you find a wicked enough move? You’ll have me in three as it is.”