Carol Berg - THE SOUL WEAVER

“My lady,” he said, “please do not ask me questions I cannot answer.”

Karon believed Ven’Dar to be a man who prized keeping faith with the Way of the Dar’Nethi above safety, above comfort, above everything else he valued. A man supremely honest. Even in our short acquaintance, I had seen enough to confirm that opinion. No amount of sarcasm or fury, wheedling or tears, was going to get me anywhere Ven’Dar wasn’t prepared to take me. “Then tell me this, Preceptor. Who swore you to this oath? Was it Karon or was it D’Natheil?”

He flinched as if I’d slapped him. Then, sighing heavily, he looked me full in the eye. “I don’t know. I hope. I’ve gambled… heavily… on the answer. But I don’t know.”

I walked over to his window and glared at the pastoral landscape. Ven’Dar wisely kept his peace until I spoke again. Only one other person might know what was happening. In only one place might I be able to do something. “I must see Gerick,” I said at last.

Ven’Dar rubbed the back of his neck, grimacing and nodding. “I agree. You should.”

I was so prepared for a refusal or some further claim of ignorance or oath-swearing that I was left stammering. “But - Well, then. Will you take me?”

“The Prince will have my head for it, if I’m not careful. And we’d best go now. The sooner the better, I think. But I beg of you, my lady… afterward… do as the Prince asks you. Our only hope is in his wisdom and in the work we’ve done to bring him to this point with his true heart. You must stay hidden until he is ready to reveal his purpose. His enemies must believe you are dead.”

“I’ll think about it after I’ve seen Gerick.”

I didn’t see Bareil as we crept down the stairs, and I dared not delay to search for him lest Ven’Dar change his mind. The Dulcé would figure out what had happened.

We left the Precept House grounds by way of a tree-shaded path and a small gate, hidden in a tangle of overgrown ivy that seemed to grow back thicker than before as soon as we tore our way through it. Ven’Dar led me through the city, pausing at each turning of the way to move his hand as if brushing sand from the path in front of us. No gaze settled on us all the way to the palace.

Soon Ven’Dar was leading me down a long sloping passageway through the heart of the fortress of the Princes of Avonar. Lamps mounted along the polished gray walls of the passage flared into life as we approached and faded again when we were well past, a small wonder in a city of wonders. In another life I would have asked Ven’Dar how such things fit with the science and nature I knew. In another life, I could imagine Ven’Dar joining the stimulating company at Windham, jousting with my cousin Martin over the proper uses of magic and the comparative delights of conversation and mind-speaking. That would not have been the life where my son was the prisoner of my husband.

When we came to a metal-banded door at the end of the passage, the Preceptor pressed a finger to his lips. Then he closed into himself for a moment, so clearly removing himself from the existence I shared that I half expected him to vanish. But, instead, he spread his upturned hands slightly apart as if strewing a handful of seeds for a flock of birds. When his eyes blinked open, he pressed a finger to his lips yet again and cautiously pulled the huge door open.

Across an empty, windowless room of massive stone, four guards, two with pikes, two with drawn swords, barred access to an iron gate. But as Ven’Dar took my hand and led me across the chamber, their eyes did not move in the slightest. We slipped around behind them and through the gate without challenge. Yet, in the instant we latched the iron gate behind us, one of the four hurried across the room and slammed his open palm against the outer door, peering into the outer passage and yelling, “Who’s there?”

Ven’Dar shoved me into the deepest shadow behind the gate. One of the jutting stone columns that supported the gate protruded from the passage wall just enough to hide us. There, like rabbits caught in the open meadow, we held motionless, our backs flattened against the stone wall.

“I’d swear to my own mother I heard steps out there,” said the guard, scratching his head and retaking his position beside his three comrades. “Guess I was wrong.”

“We’re all skittish,” said one of the guards - a woman. “What if the Three come to free their Fourth? And what would our people say if they knew he was here? We don’t know if the cell can even hold the power of a Lord.”

“Not sure I believe one of the cursed ones is here. Not after so long. He doesn’t have the look I expected of a Lord. I’d heard they’ve metal faces with jewels for their eyes.”

Signaling me to remain still, Ven’Dar slipped farther down the passage that would take us deeper into the bowels of the palace. The guards’ backs formed a solid wall on the other side of the gate.

“They can change their appearance at will,” said the woman. “Take anyone’s body they want and use it till it’s dead. It’s why you’re not to look on him. Not ever.”

“He ought to be dead,” spoke up the largest of the four, a barrel-chested man who was closest to me. His thick jaw was pulsing, and he flexed thick fingers on the pike-shaped weapon that glowed blue in the dim light. “After finding my two brothers spitted like suckling pigs two years ago… still warm they were, with those collars grown into their flesh… Eyes of darkness! It makes me want to slit this prisoner’s throat. I never felt that way before - wanting somebody to die by my own hand. I can’t see why the Prince would keep a Lord alive.”

The man standing next to the speaker laid a hairy hand on his comrade’s shoulder. “He won’t be much longer…”

A hand touched my own sleeve. I jumped, grazing an elbow on the column. Ven’Dar led me down another sloping passage, past another quartet of paralyzed guards, and into a dimly lit chamber, bare of any furnishing save a wooden bench pushed against one wall and a narrow, raised stone platform or table in the center. Eyebolts had been seated in the corners of the stone table. The only break in the gray stone walls was a rectangular gate of narrowly spaced bars that shone silver in the light of a single small lamp. The air was thick with enchantment, heavy, dreadful, weighing on my spirit like a mountain of lead. I shuddered.

“We’ve only a few moments,” whispered the Preceptor, as he closed the heavy door softly behind us. “A Dar’Nethi Watcher has already detected my winding and will be here very quickly to investigate. Not a subtle enchantment, but the only way to get us in.”

Ven’Dar motioned me to the bars, standing close behind me as I peered through. The cell was dark. The weak gleam of the guardroom lamp reached through the bars only far enough to illuminate the wooden bowl, filled with meat and bread, and the full mug that sat just inside the enclosure.

A light flared at my shoulder, casting a sharp, barred shadow deep into the cell. The prisoner was sitting on the floor in the corner, and when he held up his hands to ward off the new brightness, silver bands about his wrists glinted in the light. More of the shining metal bound his ankles and linked him to ring bolts on the wall. The bands and chains and the silver strips embedded in the walls and ceiling would hold the enchantments that kept him powerless, if such was possible. Two blankets lay crumpled on the floor beside him.

“If you’ve come to gloat, get it over and go away. I prefer the dark and would as soon not look on you.”

“Gerick, dear one, are you all right?”

“Mother!” Squinting into the brightness, he jumped up and moved toward the bars the few steps his restraints would allow. “What are you - Mother, you must get away from here!”