Gate to Kandrith (The Kandrith Series) (26 page)

His firm tone got through; the refetti calmed. He deposited the ugly beast in his pocket and concentrated on Sara.

“You’re not mad.” How often did he have to say it? Fear drove his anger. Lance clamped down on both emotions and tried to offer reason. “I’ve met madmen.” Desperate relatives often brought the afflicted to those who wore the Brown. He always tried to heal them—and failed. “I know what madmen are like. You can hold a conversation. You can dress and feed yourself.” She didn’t drool and scream at nothing.

But what if those others hadn’t either, at first? What if the symptoms worsened over time?

“I don’t know why my healing doesn’t work on you.” A bitter admission. “But whatever is wrong with you, my father should be able to fix it.”

“Is he a healer too?” Sara asked.

“No, but my father has sacrificed much and has more powers than I know. He’s probably the most powerful man in the world,” Lance said without bragging. He tried to think of a good way to explain. “Remember the Watcher at the Gate?”

“The little blind boy? Yes.”

“He is a very powerful Watcher, because of his age. The greater the sacrifice, the more powerful the gift. It isn’t as much of a sacrifice for an old woman to give up her sight, which may have already begun to fail, than it is for a child to give up his or her sight.”

Sara nodded.

“It’s the same with my father. It’s a greater sacrifice to be both blind and deaf than to be either alone. It’s a greater sacrifice to have no hands, than lose just one. With multiple sacrifices comes greater power. My father can hear not just spoken truth, but the secrets that lie in the hearts of men. He can talk to animals, or pull down a mountain with but a gesture. His Lifegift can kill a blue devil.”

Sara looked skeptical. She would see. Lance crushed down the doubts that rose in his mind.

Insanity offended him at a basic level because it resisted his ability to heal. It made him helpless as he had not been since the day Madam Lust had ordered Wenda whipped and he’d had to listen to his sister’s screams… He’d sacrificed his health to heal Wenda and never once regretted it. But today Sara was hurting, and he could not help her.

It nigh killed him to watch her struggle under the burden of pain and fear. If the Goddess had told him he could heal her by breaking both his legs, he would have done it in an instant.

He had to force himself not to walk faster, to hurry to the Hall.

They paused briefly for lunch, sitting on a log with the last of their bread and cheese spread on a napkin between them. Lance urged Sara to eat, but she shook her head, a stiff movement that spoke of pain. “I won’t keep it down.”

Lance tried to persuade her again. “Let me try to heal you. Your headache went away for awhile when I healed you overnight,” he reminded her.

“No.” Her voice was a whisper. Her blue eyes were haggard, but somehow it only made her look more beautiful, fragile and otherworldly.

He thought seriously about forcing her to accept his healing, but in the end he didn’t dare. “Is there anything else I can do?” he asked finally. He remembered the basin of hot water she’d insisted on for his arthritic knuckles. Had she felt this helpless then?

Did Wenda and his parents feel like this when they saw him ill? Was his father just as relieved as Lance was when duty called him away? A disquieting thought.

“Nothing,” Sara whispered. “Except…”

“Yes?”

“Can we…not go to the Hall today?”

“We’re only a couple hours away,” Lance told her. “I know walking jars your head, but the sooner we get there, the sooner my father can help you.”

“Of course,” Sara said after a pause. She got up and began, wearily, to walk again.

After that, she said almost nothing, and Lance grew more and more worried. He felt relieved when the fog bank appeared at the base of the next hill. “We’re close now,” he told Sara. The mist loomed like a wall.

She stopped dead. “I can’t.” She broke free, took a step into the whiteness—

Lance lunged after her. “Wait!” She slipped through his fingers, vanishing into the foggy woods. He hurried after her, one hand held up to protect his face from spearing branches.

One step into the chilly fog and the footpath split into three. A branch quivered; Lance went to the right. Another few steps and the path forked again, the beginning of the Mist Labyrinth that protected the Hall. He went left this time and left twice more in quick succession, hoping to catch another glimpse of Sara.

He failed. Lance stopped before the next fork in the path, dismayed. Tendrils of mist curled around his feet and wreathed the sycamores. The labyrinth dated from the days before the Red Saints made their sacrifice, before Kandrith was its own country, back when the Hall was a bandit hideout for escaped slaves. The Lifegift was said to have defeated an army once, dividing its centuries into cohorts, and its cohorts into scared men. Some found themselves back where they’d started, and some remained lost until they starved to death. How was he going to find Sara in it?

“Sara?” he called, but the fog seemed to swallow sound. The woods were dead, bare of leaf, moved only by the wind. No squirrels ran from branch to branch, no birds nested or called.

A sudden wriggling in his pocket made him remember the refetti. He pulled the animal’s long body out and held it up. “Any chance you can find your mistress?”

The refetti wiggled its nose at him.

The animal’s sense of smell was bound to be keener than his. Lance dug out a small length of darning yarn from his bag and put a loose loop around the refetti’s chest. “Go,” he said, feeling a little foolish. “Find Sara.”

The refetti dashed down the path, taking the next right, then three lefts in a row, and there was Sara.

Despite the damp ground, she was sitting down, her head cradled in her hands. The refetti circled her in excitement. A few feet away, Lance saw the ivory gleam of a skull peeking out of the soil.

Lance waited until he was close enough to grab her before speaking again. “Sara?”

Her head came up. Dull misery clouded her eyes, but she didn’t flee.

“What’s wrong?” Lance asked, his voice rough. “Why did you run away?”

“I don’t want to go to the Hall.” She began to mumble. “Terrible things will happen if I go. Don’t make me. Please, don’t make me.”

Lance tried to reason with her. “The Hall will have shelter, a warm bed and a hot meal. At the very least, some place dark and quiet where you can sleep.”

Tears began to drip down her cheeks. “No. He’ll lock me up.”

“Who? My father?” Lance asked, bewildered. “No, he won’t. He has power, but he doesn’t abuse it.”

When Sara spoke again, she was incoherent. Something bad was going to happen. She’d be locked up forever. She didn’t want to go.

Impatient, frantic and feeling like a brute for insisting that they continue, Lance finally grabbed her hand to pull her to her feet—

Loma’s healing grace filled him.

But the etched lines of misery on Sara’s face eased only a fraction. The Goddess was as helpless as he was. It was almost as if something was injuring her right now…

“Come on,” he said as gently as he could. He took her hand and pulled her up. She followed, but walked with her eyes closed.

Lance chose their path through the fog and forest at random, going left, then right, then right again. The maze had no pattern. The important thing was to keep going forward, not to doubt yourself and turn back. That and to stay calm. Anger made the fog thicken.

And apparently so did fear, because Lance had to work to calm himself down before the curtains of mist finally deigned to part and reveal the Hall.

* * *

Someone gently shook Sara’s shoulder, intruding into her silent universe of pain. “We’re here,” Lance said.

They were? The journey seemed to have taken years, but Sara felt no relief at its end. She could not believe in a cure. She had always had a headache and always would.

She refused to open her eyes—until she heard a small yip. She turned her head in time to see her refetti free itself from the yarn around its middle and scurry through the grass, making a beeline toward the Hall.

She took one step in chase; her elbow jerked free of Lance’s grip. Pain slammed through her head like a lightning bolt. She screamed. A sun flared behind her eyes…

Lance caught her arm when she would have fallen. The terrible brightness retreated, but not very far, lying in wait.

* * *

Esam tore himself free from the Defiled One. He flung himself forward, but his steps slowed as the voices of the dead clamored protests in his ears.

His human mind knew he must hurry or another massacre would occur, but the voices shredded his reason, driving his refetti self mad. He forced himself to take four more quick steps forward, then shuddered to a stop, battered by the increasing wails.

A chance yet remained to avert the coming catastrophe. The Giant had claimed that his father could speak to animals. If he could just get there ahead of the Defiled One…but it was no use. He lacked the strength to go on.

For the first time, he wished he had done as his father asked and followed the Path farther himself. He would happily endure the life of a Scholar to not be so helpless now.

Esam closed his eyes, mouth moving in fervent prayer as he struggled forward a few more steps.

Holy Ones, I pledge myself to follow the Path, if you will but help me.

Either they heard him or his next step gained him enough distance because the voices of the dead faded, along with the compulsion to return to the Defiled One’s side. Freed, he scampered across the courtyard as fast as his paws could carry him.

His refetti eyes saw a sheer cliff rising up from the ground, but the human portion of his mind knew it for a building. He spied a small gap at the base and squeezed under the door, leaving a chunk of his fur behind. He whipped down a hallway.

The floor felt strange under his paws. It had the color and vertical grains of wood, but didn’t smell right. It was hard as stone and glass smooth. He skidded while turning into a huge, echoing room.

He smelled humans and cried, “Help me!”

It was easy to identify the one who spoke to animals, the Giant’s father, for he replied. “Who asks for my help?”

Esam could have wept—to be understood at last!—but refetties had no tears. “I ask, Esam, Warrior of the Qiph. I am trapped in this body. The Defiled One is coming! I have no time to explain.”

“Try, little one.”

Esam rushed into speech. “A dark ritual was performed last moon that raised immense power. Though it took place in the Republic, the Pathfinders of my land sensed it. They sent a group across the border to investigate and found the scene of an unholy massacre. The Pathfinders changed me into a refetti so that I might track down the one responsible. The voices of the dead led me to the Defiled One, but—”

“Defiled by what?” the man asked.

Esam told him. “You must kill her,” he finished. “Then you must use the Soul Box your son carries.”

The man listened attentively then turned to the woman by his side. “My dear, a blue devil approaches.” He paused. “I may have to use my Lifegift.”

The woman vibrated with tension. “I will protect you with my life.”

“Of course.” He smiled gently. “But we have some time. Clear as many people from the Hall as you can.”

She nodded once, kissed him fiercely, then strode from the room. “I’ll make all ready.”

Esam was agitated. The Giant’s father had not understood. The Defiled One would be here in only moments.

The man stooped down and held out his stump. “Come here, little one.”

Esam scrambled up onto his shoulder. “There’s no time!”

“Shh.” A wrist stroked his fur. “I had to lie,” the man said softly. “She would never leave me otherwise.”

* * *

Shuffling like an old woman, Sara approached the Hall.

Set into a notch in the hillside, the Hall was almost invisible from a distance. Up close it proved to be a hodgepodge with extra rooms added here and there to the main hall, often at angles. One tower had a domed roof.

The main door stood at the top of six steps. The fortyish man standing guard recognized Lance. “You’re expected,” he said. “I have a message from your father.”

The guard pulled Lance aside, and Sara leaned heavily against the wall, bereft of the Goddess’s touch.

The message seemed to perplex Lance. Through Sara’s pain she heard random snippets of their conversation. “…box? …does he want?”

“…don’t know,” the guard replied.

“Well, I’m not leaving her here out in the cold,” Lance said sharply. “Help me get her inside. She’s very ill.”

“No.” Sara’s throat felt dry and disused. “I can walk. There’s nothing wrong with my legs.” It was only her head that felt like an olive in an oil press.

She represented the Republic of Temboria and House Remillus. Pride demanded that she meet the Kandrith standing on her own two feet, not clinging to his son’s hand. Sara couldn’t think just now why pride was so important, but it was. Thinking hurt. She started to walk instead. Lance hovered at her elbow.

They attracted attention as they moved along. Servants carrying bundles paused, then hurried outside, giving her a wide berth. A mother snatched her child back and whisked through a different door. Sara ignored them all. The blinding pain didn’t leave room for anything but sickness.

Sara’s gaze fixed on the floor. After a dozen steps, Lance stopped her. “Wait here, Sara.” He entered a doorway.

Sara’s head swam. Nausea crawled up her throat. Her skin felt clammy, and her legs trembled.

If she waited another second, she would collapse. Surely Lance had had enough time to greet his father by now? She groped her way through the doorway and into the audience hall.

The brightness behind her eyes returned, making it hard for Sara to focus or hear. The room and its occupants seemed weirdly distorted.

Lance stood a few feet away, gesturing urgently. Weapons covered the walls. She saw two thrones, one empty. But all that was gray, indistinct, mere background. A man robed in red snared her attention.