“Agreeing to help me escape her cost Norina too much,” Karis said. “She became as bound to me as I am bound to smoke.”
“She was what, Medric’s age?”
“She was never young,” Karis said. “When she was crowning between her mother’s legs, her mother shouted, ‘There’s been a mistake! My baby is an old woman!’ ”
“That explains a lot,” Zanja said gravely. “But I’ve never understood exactly why Norina agreed to help you. If you were not to be the G’deon …”
Karis said wearily, “No, Zanja, she told you the truth when we were at Strongbridge. It is her duty to make it possible for me to survive to vest the next G’deon.”
“That’s all you live for? To lay upon some child a burden you could not yourself endure?”
Karis lifted her head then, and Zanja let go of her. Having felt the force of her anger before, Zanja thought it prudent to put some distance between them.
“I am not completely without hope,” Karis said, with great restraint. “I can yet believe that the future can be different from and better than the present. I even have the audacity to imagine that I might yet win some small honor for delivering Shaftal’s inheritance to its rightful heir.”
Zanja said, “But why are you not Shaftal’s rightful heir?”
“You have to ask? Just look at me.”
“Do you believe that Harald G’deon picked you as thoughtlessly as he would pick a whore, and raped you with his power merely because you were convenient? Or rather, is that the story Mabin wants you to believe? This same Mabin who hates you and controlled you first through smoke and later through your beloved friend, and finally, rather than have you escape her control, all but murdered you? You still trust that woman’s judgment?”
A long time the silence lasted. Karis rubbed her eyes as though to clear away a blur of tears.
“Tell me what happened when they brought you to Harald,” Zanja said.
“It was afternoon. The night before, I had managed to use smoke without Dinal realizing it, for we were sleeping under stars. But once we came to the House of Lilterwess, I began to worry, for it was such a crowded place. Dinal had been so kind to me, I feared to lose her regard by telling her the truth, but I thought that I would have to. That was the only thing on my mind as she brought me into Harald’s room. The room was full of silent, dignified people, who all turned in surprise to stare at me. Dinal’s hand was on my shoulder. She pushed me forward, and the dying man on the bed opened his eyes and held out his hand to me. I felt a surprise, a kinship–he was an earth witch like myself. I knew so little that I didn’t even realize this must be Harald G’deon. I thought that he might teach me what to do with myself, if he lives. But his life fire burned so faintly, I knew he would only live a few more hours at most. So I took hold of his hand, to bid him a safe journey. That is what I remember clearly. Norina says he died immediately after empowering me, without saying a word.“
“Who decided it was not Harald’s intention to name you his successor?”
“It was the Lilterwess Council. Once Dinal explained who I was, and it became evident I was a smoke addict, the council decided not to affirm me as G’deon.”
“But Norina was not party to that meeting, was she? And Mabin is the only councilor who survived the night.”
“Norina has her faults, but she has never lied to me.”
“No, but it’s possible she doesn’t know the entire truth. I’m asking because I don’t understand why Mabin fears you enough to kill you.”
Karis said quietly, “I have been vested with a stunning power, and nothing can stop me from exercising it as I choose. Don’t you find that frightening? I’m certain Mabin fears that I will challenge her, and claim the G’deon’s right. That I have no desire to do so must be unbelievable to her.”
“But what if Harald G’deon knew what you were when he sent Dinal for you? Even if he was out of his mind, as some say he was, he was not a fool. So let the G’deon’s chair remain empty if that’s what seems right to you, and wander the land in rags and die unknown like Mackapee did. Scholars like Emil and Medric will study the obscure history of your life a hundred years from now and never quite make sense of it. So what, so long as it makes sense to you?”
Karis uttered a short laugh.
“What I see is that your life has been decided by people who seem determined to keep you within boundaries and to keep you from realizing that they are controlling you. And I see that as a result you never have made a choice for yourself except one time, the time you saved my life. And it put all of your keepers into a panic, which surely reveals how illusory are the boundaries they’ve put around you, and how easy it would be for you to simply step outside of them. So why not set yourself free of them? If you were free to live as well and joyfully as you could, exercising with honor what powers have been given to you, what would you do? Can you even imagine?“
Karis muttered to herself, as her raven would have, “Oh, I am in dire danger.”
She laid her hands flat against the stony beach. “I know exactly what I would do,” she said. She got abruptly to her feet. “Excuse me.” And she was gone, striding quickly back the way she had come, to where Medric sat awake in his bed. Perhaps it was a trick of the light reflecting from his spectacles that made it seem as if he were staring at them across the length of the beach. Karis sat beside him and they had a long, sometimes agitated conversation, which ended only when Karis got up to go back into her cave.
Zanja looked in on her after a while, and Karis raised her head from where she sat in a huddle upon the floor, with her filled smoke pipe in reach, and the water clock plunking the occasional drop into the bowl. Zanja said, “Since you were kidnapped twenty‑one days ago, one keeper or another has been hovering over you. It’s not a role I relish much myself, so I hope you’ll just tell me when you think you’re strong enough to need no looking after. Are you strong enough today?”
Karis shook her head. She looked frightened and worn out, and Zanja remembered that Karis had no way to judge what her limits were. “Shall I come in?” she asked.
“You’re very formal.”
“Well, I’m making up this dance as I go along. I can’t get it right all the time.”
Karis smiled. “That’s better. You know, you aren’t always the most restful of companions.”
“Are you admonishing me?” Zanja sat down beside her. “I’ll be boring if you will.”
“No,” Karis said, “and no again. But let’s not talk about the future anymore.”
So Zanja diverted Karis with tales of her lifelong friendship with Ransel, until the water level in the bowl had risen high enough, and Karis reached for the pipe. She suffered no life‑threatening convulsions, and because of her rapidly increasing strength, she remained awake after she had smoked. Zanja supposed she could take her for a walk, like a pet, but the very idea was so unsettling that she got up and left the cave instead. It was more than disconcerting to see Karis go from the morning’s robust passions and willful vigor to this helpless passivity. The contradiction between the two Karises was not at all easy to encompass, and Zanja began to understand a little of why Mabin and Norina and even Karis herself had been unable to imagine her as anything other than a flawed vessel, to be patched together until it could be replaced. But if fire talent could not encompass a grand contradiction, what good was it?
It seemed strange that the nights had turned chilly, until Zanja examined the night sky and realized that any day now, the stars of summer would set. Karis took Zanja exploring up the river canyon, which required more stamina than Zanja would have thought Karis possessed. Karis’s energy seemed inspired by the grand scale of the landscape: the broken rocks as big as houses, the foaming river, the looming stone cliffs, the narrow strip of sky. Her fascination with the place worked as a camouflage, and it took some time for Zanja to realize that the quality of their conversation had changed, and not for the better. They skated across the surface of a conversation mysteriously opaque and impenetrable, like water turned to ice.