Carol Berg - Guardians Of The Keep

“Thank you,” I said, my breath taken away by the marvel. “That was lovely.”

“It’s too cold to wake it completely, and I know I must be wary in this world, but I thought perhaps it might ease your sadness.”

“And so it has.” I hadn’t meant for him to see my tears. Perhaps he would think they were for my mother. “You’ll come again to visit me?” Dassine was almost with us.

“If my keeper allows it. I’d like it very-” Both voice and smile died away as he stared at my face. Knitting his brow, he touched my tears with his finger, and his expression changed as if I had grown wings or was a dead woman that walked before him. “Seri… you’re…” Pain glanced across his face, and the color drained out of him. Rigid, trembling, he whispered, “I know you.” He raised his hands to the sides of his head. “A beacon in darkness… Oh gods, so dark…” Eyes closed, head bent, he groaned and stepped backward. I reached out.

“Do not!” commanded Dassine angrily, shoving me aside and grabbing Karon’s arm to steady him. “What have you done? What did you say?”

“Nothing. Nothing that was forbidden. We walked and talked of the garden. Nothing of the past. He made the tree bloom for me.”

Dassine laid his hands on Karon’s temples, murmuring words I couldn’t hear. Instantly, Karon’s face went slack. When his eyes flicked open again, they were fixed on the ground, and the light had gone out of them.

“What is it? What’s happened?” I whispered.

“As I said. It was not a good time to bring him. You are too strong an influence.” The old man took Karon’s arm. “Come, my son. Our time here is done. We’ve a hard journey home.” They started down the path toward the eastern wall.

“Dassine!” I called after them. “Will he be all right?”

“Yes, yes. He’ll be fine. It was my fault. It was too early, and I left him too long. A setback only.”

Before I could bid him farewell or ask when they might come again, the two white figures disappeared into a flickering fog.

Karon

Surely I am the sorriest of madmen. These hands… they are not the hands that lifted the wine goblet to my father on the day he became the Lord of Avonar, my Avonar of the mundane world, the Avonar that is no more. The shape is wrong. They’re too large; the palms too wide. The hair on the backs of them too fair. This face… I peer into this placid pond that mimes so truly the tree and the stone beside me and. the clouds that travel these azure skies, and the face I see is not the face that looks back at me from the ponds that exist in my memory. And my left arm… only four scars. Into what reality did the hundreds of them vanish, each one a painful ecstasy so clearly remembered, each one a reminder of the gift I know is still a part of me? It is a loss beside which the loss of the limb itself would be no matter at all. Where has the first of them gone, the long, ragged one made when I embraced my dying brother and a future that terrified me-the day I first knew I was a Healer? With this gift I have brought people back from the dead.

So. These are a stranger’s hands. Yet, I know their history, too. Know and feel and remember… They have been anointed with oil of silestia, that which consecrates the Heir of our ancient king, D’Arnath, to the service of his people. With them I raised the Preceptors of Gondai from their genuflections on the day I was made Prince of Avonar, this other Avonar that still lives. These hands wield a sword with the precision of a gem cutter and the speed of lightning. And they have taken life, a deed that fills my soul with revulsion.

How is it possible that I’ve killed and thought it right? And I’m good at it and proud of my prowess…

As I sat in Dassine’s garden, I pressed my hands-the stranger’s hands-to my face, digging the heels into my eye sockets so perhaps the world wouldn’t come apart on this bright, windy winter morning-or if it did, at least I wouldn’t see it. As always after a session with Dassine, my search for understanding had left me stranded on a mental precipice, facing… nothing. Absolutely nothing. If I stayed at the precipice too long, tried too hard to shape some coherent image in this gaping hole in my head, the universe would fall apart in front of me, not just in the mind’s realm, but the physical world, too. Jagged cracks of darkness would split whatever scene I looked on and break it into little fragments-a tree, a stone, a chair, my hand-and then, one by one, the fragments would fade and vanish into the abyss.

The effort of holding the world together always felt as if it were tearing my eyes right out of my skull. Even worse than the physical discomfort was the paralyzing, suffocating horror that always accompanied it. And I knew in my very bones that if ever I let the whole world disappear, I would never find my way back. If I was capable of speech, I would beg Dassine to make it stop, to wipe clean all he had returned, to excise that mote of cold reason that told me I would never be whole until I knew everything.

And what did my teacher, my companion, my keeper, answer when I begged his mercy? He would pat my throbbing head and remove my shaking hands from their desperate hold on his wrinkled robe, and say, “We’ve pushed a little too hard today. Take an extra hour’s rest before we begin again.” For, of course, my questioning, my feeble attempt to unravel the meaning of the person I was and the lives I had lived, was but the inevitable result of Dassine’s schooling.

In my life as a Healer in the mundane world, I had once come upon a remote village where the inhabitants had discovered a tree whose fruit, dried and powdered and mixed with wine, gave them terrifying visions that they believed came from their gods. Drinking this potion also caused them to forget to eat and to care for themselves. When I found these people, the corpses of their starved, neglected children lay all about their village. The few adults who yet breathed were wasted with starvation and disease. Though they knew well that their insatiable foolishness had led them to this piteous state, they could not refuse the call of their gods. I understood them now. Even when so weary I could neither eat nor lift a cup, even when I wept from exhaustion and madness, neither could I refuse another taste of Dassine’s gift. Dassine-my master, my subject, my jailer, my healer, my tormentor.

A cold gust caught the hood of my white robe, yanking it off my head and dumping the snow from a bare tree limb onto my neck. With leaden arms, I reached around and brushed off the snow, feeling a few icy droplets trickling down my back. Shivering, I drew my stranger’s hands into the folds of the wool robe. Who am I? What’s happened to me?

“Come on. Time to sleep.” I hadn’t heard Dassine open the door.

He had already disappeared back into the house, leaving the door open. He wouldn’t expect me to answer. Words were always an effort by this time. I rose and padded through the garden after him, shedding my flimsy sandals at the door. I needed the fresh air, even on such a cold day, to remind myself that a world existed beyond my broken mind. Our latest session had ended better than most. No panic. No raving. No begging.

Once I’d stepped inside the house and closed off the world again, Dassine pointed to a cup of tea sitting on the table. “You shouldn’t go out on days like this. I don’t like you getting so cold.”