“No need to shepherd me, my lord,” said Jayereth, bundling her materials into her arms. “I’ve already started copying my notes. If Mistress Ce’Aret will excuse me from the rest of the meeting, I’ll promise not to leave the palace tonight until warded transcripts are safely in each Preceptor’s hands.”

“Good… yes… that should do.” I grabbed on to her solution. Of course it was better that she commit her information to paper so we could all know it. I could be back by the time she finished her transcriptions.

Jayereth bowed to the four Preceptors, and then sank to one knee in front of me, her plain face alight with triumph. “By midsummer every Dar’Nethi in Avonar will know how to make one of these. We’ll have them free, my lord. Every slave shall be free.”

As she hurried out of the room, Gar’Dena and Ustele continued to argue about how we should handle the news. The debate grew more strident by the moment, its premises all too familiar.

“Just stop!” I shouted. “Enough for today. Go find yourself some dinner, keep the information to yourself, and think carefully about it. Make sure Jayereth knows where you can be found so she can deliver her transcripts. We’ll continue this discussion and all our other business tomorrow.”

“I would speak with you about this matter as soon as possible, lord Prince.”

“No, Ustele. Not tonight… I’ve other things to do.”

“Where will you - ?”

“It is none of your concern. We’ll discuss it tomorrow.” I was in no mood to be lectured about the frivolous expenditure of my time or my reckless usage of the Bridge that was “designed to keep the universe in balance, not to enable family visits.” I left the old man muttering.

Without stopping to wash, shave, change clothes, or even grab the gifts I had selected months ago for my next visit, I ran down the stairs and passages into the deepest heart of the palace, walked through the warded door that would open only for me, and stepped through the wall of white fire and onto D’Arnath’s Bridge. Two hours or so for the crossing, and I would be with Seri.

Seri

Enough! I threw the wilted seedlings into my basket, stood up, and stretched my aching back, brushing away a long-legged spider tickling my grimy hand. The remaining bean plants stood nicely separated in the row of dark earth. My old friend Jonah would have been pleased that I remembered his lesson: Removing healthy seedlings to leave the others room to grow was necessary for a successful crop.

The sun was almost down. The evening damp creeping out from under the heavy leaves bore the rich scents of early summer: thyme and mint, greenness and good soil. I carried my basket to the waste heap at the edge of the garden, dumped the contents onto the pile of damp leaves, weeds, and dirt, and tossed the basket into the wooden barrow. As I rinsed my hands with a scoop of water from the rain barrel, running footsteps crunched the gravel path leading from the stableyard. I spun in the direction of the rosy afterglow just in time to see two long, blue-clad arms reaching for me, just in time to flush with pleasure and call his name. “Karon!”

I couldn’t understand his answered greeting, as his head was buried in my neck and my hair, and no more words were forthcoming for a while as he kissed every finger’s breadth of my grimy face. “I’ve only an hour,” he said at last, spinning me dizzy in a fierce embrace. “Tomorrow comes quickly, and I’ve a thousand things pressing. Jayereth just brought us the most marvelous news, and I ought to be with her. But I’ve decreed this time ours. Duty shall have no share of it. Only the two of us… ”

The two of us: I, a woman of middle years, living on the charity of an old friend, and my husband, the Prince of Avonar, ruler of a kingdom that was not of my own world. To anyone who heard it, our story would sound absurd. The body my husband wore was not the one I had embraced in the brief years of our marriage. The Prince D’Natheil bore little physical resemblance to the slender, dark-haired Healer with the scarred arm who had been burned to death sixteen years ago at the behest of Leiran law. For ten years I had believed myself a widow.

Yet this tall, fair sorcerer prince with arms like oak trees and a back like a fortress wall was truly Karon. I could hear it in his voice as he told me of how he’d been unable to shake the image of my face while sitting in a meeting of his counselors that day. I could sense it in his manner as he paused to catch his breath, backing away a step and holding my hand, half embarrassed at his own display of passion. I could see it in his clear blue eyes that shone with love and good humor and a sheer, stubborn goodness that insisted on seeing its own reflection even when gazing on the deepest horrors of two worlds. Before I’d heard the story of how his salvation had come about, before he had regained his own memory of his life, death, and return, I had known him.

As his gaze enfolded me like a sheepskin cloak in winter, his skin thrummed with restless energy. His fingers, warm and wide, twined with my own, asking… hoping… needing… “Ah, Seri, I miss you so.”

I understood. I was not stone. But I held him at arm’s length, pulling him onto the path that led through the gardens and walking briskly into the surrounding parkland. “First, tell me what thousand things prevent your staying more than one pitiful hour. It’s been three months this time.” Three months, two weeks, and three days, in fact, since his last visit.

Four years ago Karon had brought our son Gerick, our young friend Paulo, and me out of the grim fortress of Zhev’Na, through the horrors of the Breach between the worlds, and back to the world I once believed was the only one in the universe. Gerick had repudiated the Lords of Zhev’Na and cast his lot with us, giving up immortality and sorcerous power beyond our comprehension because he refused to have our blood on his hands. At that time, we had decided that Gerick could not risk another crossing of the Breach, even using D’Arnath’s Bridge, until we had built a barrier of time and love and ordinary life between him and the Lords, and so Karon had taken up his duties in Avonar without us. Gerick and I had come to stay with our friend Tennice in this genteel country house, surrounded by cherry orchards and parkland and the rolling green countryside of Valleor.

“Nothing different. Work. Traveling everywhere. Trying to get my own people to trust me. Trying to end this damnable war. Trying to heal what I can. I’ve given up thinking life will get simpler or easier. But I swore not to talk about business. This time is for you. Anything else - ”

He tried to drag me to a stop, but I wrenched my hand away and kept walking. “No. You must and will talk about business. I need to know what you do every day, Karon, what you think about, whom you talk to and what they’re like, the good and the bad of it. Tell me about the weather, about your palace, and your horse, and the healings you work. Imagining such things is the only way I’m allowed to share your life. At least tell me of reality, so I’ll know I’m imagining something close to it.” So I wouldn’t keep thinking of him as a stranger when he was too far away for me to seek the truth in his eyes or his manner or his voice.

In our first year at Verdillon, Karon had come to us every few weeks, staying for days at a time. But necessity ended that luxury. Karon was the Heir of the ancient sorcerer king, D’Arnath, sovereign of all that remained of Gondai, the magical world beyond the Breach, the sole protector and defender of D’Arnath’s Bridge, this singular enchantment designed to counter the Lords and their evils. Yet he knew almost none of his subjects and had only a limited understanding of their world. The Dar’Nethi needed the reassurance of their sovereign’s presence. I could accept that. I was a warrior’s daughter, raised to understand the obligations of a noble. If Karon was to lead his people, then he and his people had to learn to know and trust each other. Traveling the length and breadth of his realm, visiting every town and village to speak with his subjects, listen to their stories, and heal their ills, and developing his plans for ending the war left him little opportunity to make the time-consuming and difficult passage across D’Arnath’s Bridge to this world. And so, as the months passed, his visits had become increasingly rare and far too brief. I felt as if we were going backward.