Son of Avonar (44 page)

“I knew it!” I murmured, though no one in the room had attention to spare for me. Another world—the mad idea I had not been able to articulate. The only answer to the puzzle of two Avonars . . . of gates and bridges and the exiled J'Ettanne.

What I have done to you, D'Natheil, was necessary. I had counted on time enough to help you discover your way, to help you learn what you must do to make the Bridge strong and resilient. But our luck has run out. After a thousand years of trying, the Lords of Zhev'Na have at last discovered how to break the power of D'Arnath's oath, a secret that we ourselves do not know. You are all that stand in their way. I fear for your life, D'Natheil, and for your soul, and I fear for the Bridge. It
must not
fall. Our enemies don't know what I have done to you or how little we know about D'Arnath's enchantments, and so your task is even more difficult than they suspect.

I thought perhaps the message was done, but anger rumbled in my belly, and I did not believe it was my own.

The crash of splintering wood and breaking glass shattered our trance, breaking off the message. Rhythmic pounding battered the front of the herb shop, as if someone were trying to kick in the door. Emitting a string of oaths that would make a soldier blanch, Kellea retrieved her sword. “Take care of my grandmother!” she cried, as she disappeared into the passage.

“Seri, get them away!” Tennice said, drawing his sword, and starting after her. “I'll meet you at the horses if I can. But don't wait for me.”

Baglos charged into the room and dropped to his knees beside the Prince. “My lord D'Natheil! Come quickly!” But D'Natheil's gaze was locked on Celine.

“Madame Celine, we must go,” I said, forcing my voice calm as I crouched beside the old woman's chair and snatched up her healer's knife. “I need to cut the binding. Please, can you hear me? I'll wait for your word.”

“One moment,” said the old woman softly. “I must look deeper. I must know what he is.”

From the shop came a thundering crash, then shouts and the clash of swords. A man's cry of painful wounding. But around me enchantment surged, and in the midst of the clamor intruded a sound so at odds with all the rest, I almost could not name it: laughter.

Celine sat pale and fragile by her fragrant window, chuckling merrily. “Cut it now,” she said, her voice soft and hoarse. “Oh, to meet this Dassine! What audacious conceit! And what power to do this thing. . . .”

I cut the bloodstained linen, and Celine's arm dropped limply into her lap. “Seri, come here,” she whispered, falling breathless back into her cushions. “Come close.” Even in my terrible anxiety, I could not refuse her. “You have to know,” she whispered in my ear. “Look deep. It is a wonder, all—” The old woman took a breath and tried to speak again, but shook her head. Then her head fell back, and, still smiling, she closed her eyes.

The noise from the other room grew louder. We dared not leave the old woman here alone. I shook her shoulder. “Madam Celine, we must get the Prince to safety. You need to come with us, too. D'Natheil, you'll have to carry her.” I tried to tell him with my stupid gestures and the smattering of words I knew in his tongue.

Though his face was beginning to reflect the desperate sounds from the other room, the Prince remained at Celine's feet. He took her dry, wrinkled hand and kissed it, and then he looked up at me, tears welling in his blue eyes. “It's no use to take her,” he said hoarsely. “She's dead.”

“Ce'na davonet, sacer Vasrin,”
cried Baglos. The Dulcé praised his god, allowing himself only this moment's wonder at D'Natheil's recovery. In a succeeding babble of exhortation, he pushed and tugged his master to his feet, urging him toward the doorway, the courtyard, and escape. D'Natheil refused to move, his hungry gaze lingering on Celine's face.

She looked so peaceful. Her dry, pink cheeks were relaxed. I bent my cheek to her mouth that still bore the trace of her smile and felt no breath. Dead. Beasts of earth and sky, what had we done?

A monstrous crashing from the direction of the shop wrenched the Prince's attention from the old woman. He looked up, bewildered at first, shocked as if someone had struck him.

“Mie giro, bence . . .”
Again, Baglos shoved him toward the kitchen and the outer door, but D'Natheil snarled, slammed him against the wall, and charged toward the front of the shop.
“Ne, ne, mie giro!”
I thought the Dulcé might tear out his beard. How could he imagine D'Natheil would avoid a fight? Baglos and I hurried after him.

The shop was in chaos. Tennice was wedged against one wall, trying to persuade a snarling assailant to loosen the grip on his throat by bringing down a shelf of jars and bottles on the man's head. Kellea was circling with two men at sword's point. As she parried one attacker's sword, she used her left hand to grasp for whatever missile she could find—a box, a tray, a bronze measuring weight—to hurl at the second man who was feinting at her with a dagger. The shop door hung in splinters, and a burning torch lay on the floor next to a sprawled stranger with a bleeding head.

Wasting no time, D'Natheil lifted Tennice's opponent and flung him against the far wall, causing another loaded shelf to crash down on him. Tennice slumped to the floor between two barrels, staring straight ahead, bleeding from a wound in his side. While I dropped to my knees and tried to revive him, wadding the tail of his shirt to press against the wound, D'Natheil turned to Kellea's fight.

“Get out of here,” Kellea yelled. “If you care for my grandmother as you say, take her out.”

The man by the doorway struggled to his feet and lunged for Kellea's back, while her other two foes moved in for the kill. D'Natheil, his handsome face transformed by rage, hoisted a table and slammed it into the wounded man, sending him back to his place on the floor. As Kellea battled the swordsman, the Prince pressed the dagger-wielding attacker away from her and into the wall. Grabbing the hand that held the weapon, he forced the dagger back on its owner, shoving it smoothly, inexorably into the wide-eyed man's throat.

Baglos shrieked and pointed toward the broken window; two more men were climbing into the shop. I grabbed a broken table leg, ready to defend Tennice with it if I could find no better weapon. But in the next instant the flames from the fallen torch ignited a barrel, nearly blinding me and pelting us with sparks and splinters. Fiery tendrils raced through the baskets, dried plants, and old wooden planks of the shop. Flame engulfed the front wall, quickly filling the room with acrid brown smoke. Kellea dropped her sword, grabbed a woven sack from a pile in the corner, and started beating at the flames. D'Natheil and Baglos did likewise. As far as I could tell through the murk, the attackers who yet lived had run away.

Raising one arm to shield my face from the heat and sparks, I tugged at Tennice's arm. “Come on,” I said. “We need to get you out of here.” He remained limp and unresponsive. It was all I could do to haul him upright to lean against my shoulder.

Heat burst the glass jars, showering us with shards of hot glass, and flames consumed their contents in sweet-scented geysers of green, blue, and orange. Baglos tugged at D'Natheil, who was still flailing at the fire. “My lord, the day is lost! Save yourself. Please, my lord!”

Kellea slapped at her smoldering tunic. “Damn you all,” she cried. “Damn you bringing your troubles here. Where is my grandmother?”

Coughing, choking, breathless with the heat and the effort of dragging Tennice toward the back of the shop, I could only shake my head.

The girl stared at me in horror, then dropped her bags and ran past me toward Celine's room. No ear in Yurevan could have failed to hear her wail. “Murderers!”

Tennice's long, limp body kept sagging out of my arms. Flames licked at his boots, and I had to knock away a flaming bundle of dried burdock that fell from the ceiling, threatening to set our clothes and hair afire.
Come on, come on,
I begged silently.
I won't leave you.
My sweat-slicked hands slipped on his bare arms as I stumbled forward, no longer sure I was going in the right direction. His body slipped again, and my arms were empty. I spun around, peering through the smoke, panicked when I couldn't locate him. But a grunt just ahead of me came from D'Natheil who was dragging my old friend through the doorway ahead of me. A hand on my back was Baglos, pushing me after them.

The air in the back passage was slightly cooler. I caught a breath and wiped my watering eyes. Beyond the sitting room door, Kellea knelt beside her grandmother, her head in the old woman's lap, no tears softening her cold mask of grief. Smoke snaked through the doorway and the window.

“Kellea, come away. The roof has caught.” I had to shout over the roar of the fire.

The girl did not acknowledge my presence.

“Listen to me. You're right that we've caused her life to end, though we had no such intent. But I want you to know that she laughed before she died. She was filled with joy at what we brought her. Don't ruin her life's ending by wasting yours.”

“Go away. You speak of choices. Let me make my own.” Her words were shaped of granite.

I joined the others who waited in the firelit courtyard. Ash drifted down on us like unholy snow.

“Where's the girl?” asked Baglos.

“She'll come,” I said. “She's too afraid of burning to stay, but too angry to come with us.”

We hurried through the alley, stopping where it met the street. The fire had attracted a crowd. A bald giant of a man was trying to organize water buckets and blankets and pails of dirt, anything to keep the fire from spreading to the adjoining houses. “You can't go in there,” he yelled at someone in the crowd.

Outlined against the flaming shop front was a man trying to escape the hold of two onlookers. “Let me through, damn you! There's a woman inside.” The furious voice slowed my steps; it was Graeme Rowan.