The Well of Darkness Read online

  I forced myself to meet her eyes as I said: “I wouldn’t have hit you.”

  To my great relief, she nodded. “I know,” she said. “I saw it in your face in the instant before Mother …” She closed her eyes and said: “I am shamed that I struck you, Rikardon.”

  “I understand, Tarani—it wasn’t me you wanted to hurt.”

  It was her turn to look relieved, then puzzled. “Why can it not always be like this between us, Rikardon? I do not need your words to tell me your meaning, and I feel it is the same for you.”

  “The Ra’ira,” Zefra whispered.

  Tarani turned as her mother stood up from the chair and came, walking a little shakily yet, toward us.

  “You are near it here,” Zefra continued. “And you are using it to see his thoughts. Do you need more proof, daughter, that you are fated to be the High Lord?”

  All the clues clicked into place, and I groaned under the revelation. “That’s what you meant by defeating Indomel, isn’t it?” I demanded. “I don’t know why I didn’t catch on sooner. When you said that about not demanding anyone’s life—that smacked of official policy, not just personal opinion.”

  I felt the anger kindle again.

  “You’re not planning to get the Ra’ira and go home, are you?” I demanded. “You’re planning a fleabitten war between you and your brother!”

  Tarani glared at me for a few tense seconds, then shrugged and laughed. “Thank you, Rikardon,” she said, then spoke to Zefra.

  “We are still near the Ra’ira, mother. And the silent understanding has faded.” She sighed, and smiled at me almost shyly. “It is nothing of power,” she said, seeming to speak more to herself than to either one of us. “And it will return. That knowledge makes the time between easier to bear.”

  I smiled back at her, feeling the sweetness start to grow again. “It was you who first told me that I say things I don’t mean, Tarani. I’ve done a lot of that since I got here. I’m sorry.”

  “I, too, am at fault,” she said. “Though I did not lie to you in my letter, I see now that I chose not to be truthful, for fear you would misjudge my motive.

  “I give you my word, my love, that I still wish only to make the Ra’ira safe from Indomel. But the gem is actively and heavily guarded, though the guards have no idea what Indomel’s prized treasure really is. I have considered every conceivable plan to get the stone back—yes, even to assassinating Indomel—and there is nothing that can be done, especially in the time left to us.”

  “‘Time left to us’?” I repeated.

  “The High Lord grows impatient for my ‘help’ to prove fruitful,” Tarani answered. “He chafes at the lack of news from Lingis, and has sent special messengers to verify your presence. Once he learns you are gone, my ‘privileged’ position will vanish.”

  “What about your mindpower?” I asked. “Both of you, working together …”

  “Might be able to control him,” Tarani said. “Zefra did once, but only for a short time. He is strong, and alert to a compulsion attack from me. It would be too risky to gamble on making him get the Ra’ira for us.”

  “A direct victory is impossible,” Zefra chimed in eagerly. “The only way for Tarani to get the Ra’ira is to inherit it—as the next High Lord.”

  “I thought you said you’d considered killing Indomel and rejected the plan,” I said.

  “We did,” Tarani answered. “But that’s the wrong way to go about it.”

  “No, it’s better for Tarani to win her place in orderly fashion,” Zefra said, pride and a well-remembered fanaticism bringing luster to her face and throat.

  It was strange and unsettling to see someone so like Tarani in appearance and yet so different. The mindgift gave them both a look that set them apart from “normal” Gandalarans, but in Zefra that distinctiveness was somehow off-center, unwholesome.

  “I can prove her birthright,” Zefra continued, “and Tarani can prove her power. But to challenge Indomel empty-handed would be to invite disaster.”

  “Empty-handed,” I mused. “Meaning, I suppose, that Indomel could produce the Ra’ira as confirmation of his right to rule?”

  “Exactly,” Zefra said, nodding. “The Lords know nothing about its powers, only its history. If Indomel has it, no matter how he got it, they will grant him his place.”

  “Are you saying that they don’t know he has it?”

  “He has told no one,” Zefra said. “Of that I am absolutely sure, It would suit his style to wield a hidden power, and that may be why he keeps it locked away.”

  “It could also be,” Tarani put in, “that he wishes to wait until he can use it easily before revealing it.”

  “Either way,” I said, “he has it, which seems to be the deciding factor. Are you telling me that we’re finished, that there’s no way to get at him?”

  “No—oh, no!” Zefra said. “The Ra’ira is a thing of legend, a token of personal power. Indomel might show it as a symbol, but he would never reveal its hidden qualities. Tarani need only present the assembled Lords with herself, her mindpower, and a symbol equally old and respected, and the Lords will acclaim her.”

  I reached into Markasset’s memory and searched around. “There is nothing that will meet the need,” I said at last, “no talisman of power that will rival the Ra’ira.”

  “There is,” Zefra whispered. “A sword. Ancient. Made of rakor. It has the power Tarani needs.”

  Rakor was the Gandalaran word for steel.

  “Rika,” I said, and seemed to feel the weight of the sword in my hand. “We’ll have to take out Obilin to get it back—and that’s a plan I don’t mind at all.”

  “How did Obilin get the Sharith’s sword?” Zefra asked, surprised.

  That‘s right, Thymas still had it when Zefra saw us in the Council Chamber, I recalled.

  “The tale is too long for telling now, Mother,” Tarani said, dismissing the subject.

  “Rika will not do,” Tarani said to me. “Serkajon’s sword is a negative symbol to Eddarta. It speaks of treachery and defeat. And an attack on Obilin would be as fruitless and dangerous, while we are inside Lord City, as trying to steal the Ra’ira.”

  “There is another sword,” Zefra said, warming to the discussion again. “As ancient as Rika—its twin, in fact. The swords were a pair, a treasure given to one of the Kings. He presented one to the Captain of the Sharith and kept the other, saying that they would be a symbol of the loyalty shared by King and Captain.”

  “Another steel sword?” I asked, reaching into Markasset’s memory and finding absolutely no record of such a thing. As far as he had known, Rika was unique in iron-scarce Gandalara. “Supposing it does exist,” I said, not caring that Zefra looked offended, “where is it now?”

  Zefra answered stiffly. “When Serkajon betrayed Harthim, the Last King discarded the sword. He threw it from him violently, the stories say, all the while raging at the disloyal Captain. At the exodus from the capital, someone went to retrieve it, but Harthim ordered that it should lie where it had fallen, that its shame should be covered with dust.”

  I closed my eyes and counted to ten. It didn’t help.

  “It’s in Kä, isn’t it?” I asked. “All we have to do is find a city that’s been lost for centuries, right?”

  Both women nodded and smiled as if I’d just won a sixth-grade spelling bee. With one voice, they echoed the name: “Kä.”

  12

  I took a step back from the two women. “Are you crazy?” I said.

  Zefra’s jaw tensed and her eyes narrowed. “Many in Eddarta believe so,” Zefra said. “Take care you do not make the same error.”

  “Why don’t you convince me, then,” I demanded, “why it makes sense to go clear across the world in pursuit of something we may not find, when we know that something we could use is right here in Eddarta?”

  “Because,” Tarani said patiently, “those things are just as inaccessible here, and an attempt to get them is fraught with personal da
nger for all three of us.”

  “All we know about the location of Kä is that it’s somewhere in the Kapiral Desert. Are you trying to tell me that there’s no danger in marching out there with no idea where we’re going—assuming, of course, that we get away from here with our skins and walk clear across the world before we start looking?”

  Tarani’s patience was wearing thin. “Do you hear what you are saying, Rikardon? ‘March’ into the desert. ‘Walk’ across the world. I think that you do not object to the plan as much as to the discomfort of making the search on foot. The Sharith are few, my friend; the rest of us must walk wherever we wish to go. Yet few people of any sense have died in the Kapiral or any other desert.”

  “Sharith?” Zefra asked; we both ignored her.

  I hate to admit it, I thought, but she may be right. Looking for that stupid city seems a much bigger job without Keeshah. Maybe I‘m even afraid …

  “Everyone else has learned those survival skills,” I said slowly. “I have never needed them.”

  “Then how did we survive walking through the Chizan Passage?” Tarani demanded. “And that terrible crossing from Sulis to Stomestad, with an injured man and a sha’um who slowed our movement?”

  I said what I felt, though I knew it had little logic. “Keeshah was there, Tarani. It’s different, now.”

  She put her hand on my shoulder, a welcome tenderness in the gesture. “Keeshah is not the source of your strength, my love. How did you get to Eddarta?” she asked.

  “I … ran,” I answered.

  “The route?” she demanded.

  “Across desert,” I answered, seeing her point but still fighting it. “But Lonna …”

  “Lonna will be with us in the Kapiral, as well,” Tarani said. “If necessary, she will bring food, as well as water. We can do this, Rikardon. And we must. It truly is the only way we can be sure Indomel never abuses the power of the Ra’ira.”

  I sighed. “You still haven’t told me how you expect to find the city,” I said.

  “Tarani’s link with the All-Mind is very strong,” Zefra said. “She read the Bronze; she will be able to find Kä.” Zefra moved forward, pressed herself between her daughter and me. “Tarani could do it alone,” she said, and turned her back to me.

  “Who is this man, daughter?”

  “He, not I,” Tarani said calmly, “is the key to finding Kä.”

  “What?” Zefra said, beating me to it by only a fraction of a second.

  “In body, he is the last of Serkajon’s line,” Tarani began.

  Zefra gasped and interrupted. “That traitor—” I tensed for the attack that was telegraphed in her voice, but Tarani grabbed her mother’s shoulders and held her facing away from me.

  “In body only, Mother. He is a Visitor. I am convinced that he comes from the time of Kä, from among the Sharith before the end of the kingdom. I—” She glanced over Zefra’s shoulder at my face, which must have registered the astonishment I felt. “I have not even told him this, Mother, but I believe he has come to bring the Kings and the Sharith back together. Why else would he have been proclaimed Captain of the Sharith?”

  Another gasp from Zefra.

  “And the first steel sword, the one Obilin now has, that sword belongs to him. Don’t you see, the swords are the symbol of the betrayal of the Sharith. Rikardon is meant to re-unite them. He will find the other one.”

  “It does not belong to him!” Zefra cried. “It is yours by right!”

  “It shall be mine, Mother. And when we return here, defeat Indomel and reclaim his sword from Obilin, then Rikardon and I, as leaders of the Sharith and the Lords, will set the pattern for the future. As we shall be together, so shall those who follow us.”

  No, I looked over Zefra‘s shoulder at Tarani‘s flushed and earnest face, and my chest tightened until it threatened to stop my lungs. Oh, no. This place has contaminated her—that “absolute power” nonsense, except it isn‘t nonsense. How long has Tarani been here? Five weeks? Six? All it took was for Tarani to learn that her mindpower is especially strong, and that she‘s legally—if that word has any application in this contorted society—in line for political power, and she‘s convinced herself that she can “save” the Ra‘ira by getting it for herself.

  Zefra glanced over her shoulder at me, then sighed and turned back to her daughter. “I must trust your choice in this, Tarani, but I cannot hide my doubts. It may not be as I fear, that he will try to turn you from your purpose. But take care that your feelings for him do not challenge your commitment to Eddarta, to the Ra’ira … to me.”

  In other words, I thought grimly, don‘t let the s-o-b get in the way of your rise to power. The chest tightness was still with me, allowing me barely to breathe. I made a conscious effort to relax. Don‘t panic, I warned myself. We‘ll soon be away from Zefra. If Tarani was so easily swayed into Zefra‘s thinking patterns, maybe she‘ll swing the other way as easily. Zefra may even have used a little subtle compulsion on Tarani. The thought was hopeful—because it made Tarani’s new direction less threatening—and frightening, because it led the way to another discovery. The tightness in my chest wasn’t fear or grief; it was Tarani’s doing.

  Another compulsion. I‘m damned if she can just do this to me whenever she feels like it, I thought furiously.

  Grimly, I fought back.

  Tarani gasped, moved restlessly, then pulled her mother into her arms. “We must go now, Mother,” she said, looking straight at me, her eyes shining in the lamp light. “We’ll be back. Care for yourself well.”

  Zefra turned to me, and the compulsion clamped down. I stood there, outwardly immobile, seething inside, while Zefra stared at me.

  “What I have said of you, Rikardon—I am Tarani’s mother. If you both return here safely, I will offer my apology, and you will share the love I bear my daughter.” Her voice thickened, and she drew herself up—at that moment, she was every inch a ruler, not a prisoner. “If anything happens to Tarani, however …”

  “Nothing will happen, Mother,” Tarani interrupted the threat. “We will both return, soon.” She hugged her mother once more; I felt myself bow stiffly.

  Tarani snatched up a few things that waited on the ledge at one side of the room: a water pouch, a baldric with sword and dagger, and a second pouch that jingled with coins. She slipped on the baldric hurriedly, then took my hand and led me to the hallway door, paused to open it slowly, and marched us out between the two guards.

  We retraced our steps, a little less smoothly than before. I was fighting the compulsion, staggering, forcing Tarani to drag me along physically. There was a bitter satisfaction in the way she gasped for breath and pulled at our linked hands in uneven spurts of energy, but the contest was nonphysical. It wasn’t even mental, except as the mind is supposed to be able to control the will. It was a conflict of desire, so strong that it took on some of the character of muscles flexing and opposing. It seemed to me that the purpose of the struggle had shifted. It wasn’t that I wanted to voice my objections and she wanted me silent. It was much more basic than that. She wanted to control me, and I wanted to prove she couldn’t.

  When we approached the city gate, I stopped struggling. Tarani stopped pulling and we rested for a minute, while she quieted her own heavy panting. Such sounds might give us away to the guards when we got nearer. I could see Tarani’s face clearly in the silvery moonlight, and she was looking at me with a mixture of curiosity and consternation.

  What do you think? I asked her silently. That I‘d let this quarrel interfere with our escape? We may have different reasons but right now I want the same thing you do—to get the hell out of Lord City, Eddarta, and this part of the world. The pressure of the compulsion lessened, but I could feel it poised, ready to clamp down again.

  Tarani, if you have any skill at thought reading at all, hear this, I pleaded, not quite sure that she couldn‘t hear me. Take away the compulsion. Show me that you have some trust left for me. Take it all away. Let‘s walk out
of here side by side, partners again.

  The compulsion made itself felt again—tight, compelling. She turned toward the gate and took my hand, and Tarani walked me out of Lord City.

  She held the compulsion until we were halfway down the ramped road to the larger city.

  It was still nearly two hours before dawn, and the road was utterly deserted, the stones of its pavement glistening and slick from condensation. This road and the river branch that followed it closely on the west linked the two parts of Eddarta. The other side of the road—as well as the hillside on the opposite side of the river—was kept free of tall growth so that the Lord City guards could have clear view in every direction downslope from the walls of the city. The slopes weren’t cultivated, but the nearness of so much water supported a lush carpet of ground cover that was sort of like the grass Ricardo had known, but taller, multiple-bladed, with fatter stalks.

  It was onto this spongy, sweet-smelling carpet that Tarani and I tumbled, the moment she released her compulsion. I caught her off guard, jerked at her arm, and we rolled down the bank of the built-up roadbed into one of the hollows of an uneven slope.

  It wsa a gesture of defiance and, I suppose, of revenge.

  I was mad at her for not trusting me.

  I was mad at myself for having lost her trust.

  I was mad at her for letting Zefra twist her.

  I was mad at myself for getting us recaptured and exposing her to Zefra’s influence. I wasn’t angry. I was mad, and determined to get some things straightened out, right then. Even though there was no one in sight, I felt exposed, standing on the moon-glittered stones of the road. So I pulled her off the road, not particularly gently, but with only the conscious goal of getting us to a place that felt more private.

  The bank was steeper than it had seemed, and we rolled together as we fell. The muscles of her arm and back moved under my hands; her legs tangled with mine; her breasts cushioned my weight as I rolled over her. Clear and sharp as a whip snapping, I felt a different need unleashed in me, absorbing and overwhelming the fury that had started our fall. When we came to a halt, I sprawled full length on top of her, pressed my mouth against hers, and fumbled urgently with the hem of her tunic, groping for the tie that fastened her trousers.