Carol Berg - Guardians Of The Keep

Karon touched my hand. “We need to go now. Gerick, you must come with us. I’ll carry Paulo.”

My son’s arms were wrapped about his middle. His terrible eyes pierced the gloom. So fragile in his darkness. So young.

The Lords’ wrath spun and surged around us. Footsteps rang on the stone beyond the great doors. They were coming.

“Ah, holy gods…” Karon’s voice broke. “We will not leave you here. If you stay… I will fight them until the last day of the world to set you free. I swear it.”

“And I with him,” I said, shaping the story yet again in my mind and heart, willing him to hear me. You have been blessed and beloved from the day we first knew you…

“Take care of Paulo, Seri. Get him out of the way.” As Karon retrieved his sword, I stepped to the battered boy on the floor.

“Wait!” Gerick held out one hand in warning. The world paused in its turning… and then, with his other hand, he reached out to Paulo.

Paulo’s eyes blinked open. He grabbed Gerick’s hand, staggered to his feet, and leaned on my son’s shoulder, grinning through his swollen eyes and bloodied lips. “We’d best go then. Lead on, my lord. We’ll be right behind.”

The creases of worry and grief graven on Karon’s blood-streaked face softened. For one moment he took my hand, his own wide hand near crushing my fingers. “As you say. Stay close, all of you.”

And as the raging fury of the Lords erupted behind us, and Madyalar crumpled to the floor, howling as Exeget’s poison ate its way into her body, Karon led the three of us into the Breach between the worlds.

We could not travel D’Arnath’s Bridge through the Breach, for no Gate or entry point existed in Zhev’Na. We had to traverse chaos itself. Karon led the way through the directionless tumult, his bare, blood-streaked arms stretched out in front of him, palms outward. No solid path lay beneath our feet. Although his power enfolded us, creating a small island of stability that allowed us to move forward, he could not shelter us completely from the grotesque visions, the unending wails of souls lost in madness, the unnamed terrors that bit at our heels and nibbled at our minds until we dared not let ourselves blink lest they fall upon us.

Yet hope beyond belief bolstered my resolution, and Paulo’s grin shone like a lighthouse lantern in the gloom. Though hot rain lashed our skin, and the screaming and wailing tore at our souls, we flailed and yelled with joyous ferocity at the monstrous birds that flew screeching at our eyes, pressing on behind Karon as if nothing could harm us.

Gerick’s terrible eyes glittered in the fantastical light and his black robes billowed in the howling gales, until he looked like another of the grotesque creatures that pursued us through that horror. But his steps dragged, so I offered Paulo my shoulder to lean on instead of his. Left alone, Gerick huddled into himself, hunching his shoulders, bowing his head, each step a visible struggle. Soon he had slowed almost to stopping, as if the tether binding him to Zhev’Na had stretched as far as it could. A towering tidal wave of mud was bearing down on him from one side.

“Karon!” I screamed over the tumult.

Karon, the wind whipping his bloody tunic about him, turned and saw what was happening. He closed his eyes and swept his arms around and upward, a surge of power holding back the deluge long enough for Gerick to catch up with us. As we moved forward again, Karon kept Gerick at his side, using his own body to shield Gerick from the horrors that escaped his enchantments.

The struggle was more than physical. Hour after hour, I heard Karon talking, encouraging, battling. “Hold, my son. No, this is not your place… I’ll not leave you. Don’t listen. Surely the enchantments of this place fear you because someday you will have power over them. They smell it in you and wish to make you afraid…”

Soon every step required a monstrous effort. We trudged through a hideous stew of stinking mud and pale, solid objects that looked like parts of bodies or beasts. We were shivering and nauseated, battered and bleeding, our cocoon becoming very thin.

“The Lords hound you so sorely because they know they have failed,” Karon gasped, as he helped Gerick across a roaring river of black water. “You held back a part of yourself, and they didn’t think you could. You are stronger- much stronger-than they believed… Take whatever you need of me. They cannot follow us here. They cannot touch you here. Endure and you will be free. I swear it upon my life. You will be free of them…”

As the hours passed, my arms grew too heavy to lift, and so my only defense against a hail of burning rocks was to turn and let them hit my back. Paulo’s grin had long faded, and even Karon’s voice fell silent as bitter rain lashed our raw skin.

Gerick stumbled. Half bent forward, holding his head, he gave an agonized cry and crumpled into the morass.

“Keep moving,” said Karon in a hoarse whisper, as he gathered Gerick into his arms and staggered onward. “She’s out there. But if I stop… can’t find her… can’t hear…”

I didn’t understand him. A shivering Paulo and I clung to each other, supported, dragged, and prodded each other to take each step. We dared not lose sight of Karon through the murk.

My thoughts slipped into villainous dreaming: of the sewing women, of the slave pen, of Ziddari’s blood-red eyes watching my husband burn. The vicious screams of the crowd, the stench as the flames consumed his mutilated body… all seemed as real as the day I lived them. Then Gerick was burning in the marketplace… No, no, I cried, you have been beloved from the day we knew you… And the executioner’s fire became the flames of the Gate-fire where Giano the Zhid had dragged me into madness to force the Prince of Avonar to destroy the Bridge.

On that terrible, glorious day, Karon had called me back to him, over and over again. Seri, love… stay close… come back… On this day, I heard him again, so clearly above the tumult. The voice from the vision of my past. Frayed. Worried. At the limit of his endurance. Almost there… soon, love… hold on…

All of them lost…Tears flowed and merged with the hot rivers of blood and fire, and I was alone again… dead again… empty again…

Another voice. Follow my thread, my lord. Can you feel it? Hold on, I’ll guide you in… “Seri, follow my voice… Is it really you?”

“… Oh, my lord Prince… Ce’na davonet, Giré D’Arnath… and the most excellent boy… and my dear lady… Vasrin Creator be praised for his glories… Vasrin Shaper be thanked for her mercies…”

“Paulo, child, how I’ve missed you… and Seri… oh, goddess mother, Seri, what’s happened to him?”

Kind voices, gentle hands… blankets… cool, sweet water… brandy that scalded my throat and seared my stomach… I could hear and feel them, but I could not see and could not answer for the fire and desolation in my eyes. Then the horrific visions were brushed away, as if with some sweet magic, and I slept without dreams, except for one of strong arms that held me close as if they would never let me go. When I woke on a crisp green morning alone in my blanket, I wept, for I thought those strong arms had been only a dream.