The candlelight faded; darkness and silence enshrouded me. Was the restoration of three lost souls-those three pitiable Zhid I had healed after the fight with Seri’s brother at the Gate-worth everything that had happened? I could see no other return from all the pain and sorrow.

Oh, Seri, forgive me. How I understand your anger…

“You cannot hide forever, D’Natheil. Three days it’s been since we completed our work.”

The room was dark, though not as dark as my soul. He spoke softly, as if unsure of the state of my hearing. But I would not wake to Exeget. I burrowed back into emptiness.

The next time it was someone else. Hands rolled me to my back and stuffed pillows under my head. “My lord Prince, you must live. You are so much needed. Here, drink this.” He pressed a cup into my shaking hands and helped me lift it to my lips. Brandy, woody and old, the smoothest I had ever tasted, yet I thought it might burn a hole through my empty stomach. I coughed and gagged and heaved, and my invisible companion helped me to sit up straight. My skin was slick with sweat.

“Holy stars!” It seemed like half a month until I caught a breath.

“It is fine, is it not? My best vintage ever.”

“Bareil?”

“The same, my lord. May I make a light?”

“If it’s necessary.” With the glimmering candle flame came the intrusion of the world and all the burdens I had shed in my days of oblivion. “Oh, gods, Bareil…” I bent forward and dragged at my hair with my fingers, as if enough pain might make reality vanish again.

“I know, my lord. It is difficult. I wish it could have been slower, easier for you.”

“You were there? You were the other hands?”

“Yes, my lord. Master Dassine had given Master Exeget a directive with which to summon me and command my assistance. And when I saw what he was doing with you- completing Master Dassine’s work-I was happy to be of service. I hope it did not contradict your wishes.”

“No.” I pushed shaggy, damp hair from my brow and felt several weeks’ growth of beard bristling on my chin. “Thank you.”

“You must eat, even though you may not feel like it yet. I’ll bring something. I’ve scarcely managed to get anything down you in all these weeks. And, my lord, Master Exeget is desperate to speak with you. Though he asked me to wake you, he waits just outside.”

“Exeget…” What was I to think of him?

“It is astonishing, is it not? I was terrified when I saw you in his power. But my lord, I must tell you that never was Master Dassine so careful in his work. I have watched many of the Dar’Nethi masters work, and none other could have brought you through this as he did.”

“Give me an hour.”

Bareil bowed and left the room. Huddled in the corner of my pallet, I forced myself to consider the state of the world. At what I guessed to be the precise expiration of my hour, the door opened and my old enemy sat himself in the chair in the corner. He began examining his hands, turning them this way and that in the weak light, showing no sign of agitation at my delay. He would sit so all night before confessing his urgency.

“I don’t know whether to thank you or not,” I said, conceding the minor struggle in the hunger for understanding.

His hands came to rest in his lap, one laid calmly upon the other. “I did what was necessary. I don’t expect you to thank me. Upon full consideration, you will most likely decide this is only another crime to add to my account.”

“You never told me what was to come after.”

“It would have made no sense at the time and may not yet. It depends on whether you were able to analyze the present situation while you lived your life again or in these past days as you lay here in your self-made tomb.”

“While I journeyed, I was wholly in the past. While I lay here, I was trying to bury it all again. But in the hour just gone, I’ve put a few things together.”

“Do you understand about the child? Who he is?”

“Yes.” Seri’s son. My son.

“And you see that because of your… unique… circumstances-this thing Dassine has done to you-your son is the next Heir of D’Arnath?”

“I guessed it.”

Exeget’s dark eyes blazed far brighter than my candle. “Do you have any concept of what it means if the Heir comes of age in the hands of the Lords?”

“The Three will control the Bridge.”

“Not only the Bridge, but all the powers of D’Arnath. Only Dassine and I, of all Dar’Nethi, ever grasped their full extent. D’Arnath was able to create the Bridge because he could manipulate the forces of the Breach, forces which are the antithesis of order, the bits left over from the creation of worlds because they were defective, too odd or corrupt or broken to be included in the weaving of the universe. Before the Catastrophe, this corruption was dispersed, incohesive. But the workings of the Three, the immense increases in power they believed they created by their superior cleverness, were in fact drawing upon these broken bits and gathering them together, until, in their last disastrous working, the Breach was formed and the corruption trapped within it.

“Only D’Arnath’s anointed Heir inherits his control over the Breach. One of our race at a time. The universe cannot seem to support two with such power. And so, if the Lords corrupt the Heir and control him-become one with him as they are one with each other-then, on the day he comes of age, they will be able to command the legions of chaos. None will be able to stand against them.”

“The test of which you spoke with Madyalar-it is the test of parentage?”

“Yes. You are D’Natheil. Your blood and bone and spirit are indisputable witness to it. You are also the father of the child. Your wife knows it; now you know it. He is Dar’Nethi. There is no other possibility. He and this man Darzid were able to cross the Bridge. Do you understand what that requires? Yes, the way was left open, but only the boy’s bloodlines-your own deeds in the mundane world bear witness to unquestionably powerful bloodlines- and whatever gifts this Darzid brings to bear could enable them to cross so easily. The man knows the boy is your son. We must assume he also knows something of what has been done to you, for he has exposed his own abilities and sympathies in order to bring the child to the Lords. Which means the Lords know the boy’s heritage, as well. If you and the boy undergo the test of parentage before the Preceptorate, the boy will be proved the son of D’Arnath’s Heir and must therefore be acknowledged as your successor.”

I fought my way through the confusion. “Then why-if you are indeed what you wish me to believe-why, in the name of all that lives, did you return my memory? If you had left me the way I was, or driven me mad with it-not a long or difficult road as you saw-or if you had killed me, the test of parentage would fail.”

His shoulders relaxed a bit, and he sighed as will a teacher who has just heard the first rudimentary evidence of progress from a recalcitrant student. “If no Heir is competent to sit for the test of his child or to name a new successor, then the Preceptorate must decide whether there is some other living descendant of D’Arnath. The only way to test a person is to send him or her onto the Bridge and see what transpires. We cannot allow what happened to you when you were twelve to happen again. We have no Dassine to make us a new and better man from a broken child. So we must keep both you and your son whole if it is possible.”

How could this man be Exeget? Why had he not felt this way when I was a child?

Evidently he was still monitoring my thoughts. “I did not vote to send you onto the Bridge when you came of age. Rather, I tried my best to stop it. There was no possibility you could survive the attempt.”

Nothing you believe is immutable… “Perhaps if I’d received better teaching.”

He waved a hand in dismissal. “I had to discover what you were. Many in Avonar said you were touched by the Lords, destined, even at nine years of age, to be their tool. If you were, I had to know. If you were not, then you would survive and be the stronger for it. My purpose was not to make you love me.”

“And what was the truth?”

“I don’t know. You were sent to the Bridge at twelve, and it almost destroyed you. Your soul was twisted beyond repair. My surmise is that the Lords had indeed reached you.”

The room was so cold. My head throbbed, and my hands would not stop shaking. I gathered a blanket around my shoulders. “I don’t know what to believe. You sent my son and his abductor to Zhev’Na. How do you know so much about all this?”

I hadn’t thought Exeget could look any more disagreeable, but his smile could have wilted a dead lily. “I am the man you know. You just don’t know everything. Nor did Dassine until the days before he died. Nor do those who lurk in Zhev’Na, believing I am the most faithful of servants, who has sold his soul to preserve the remnants of his power, and who so diligently carries out their plans to destroy his world and his people.”

Logic and history forbade belief. “You violated the madris, commanded Baglos, your madrissé, to kill me.” Seri had prevented the foolish Dulcé from poisoning me when Dassine had sent me across the Bridge to prevent its destruction, and the other preceptors tried to trade my life for the safety of Avonar.

“That was an act of desperation. I didn’t trust Dassine after his sojourn in the Wastes, and I didn’t know what he’d done to you. The D’Natheil I knew could never have succeeded in the task that had to be done. As long as the Bridge exists, the world has hope. I believed you would destroy it. And so I believed you had to die. Thankfully, that was not necessary.”

“And Madyalar…”

“Madyalar has served the Lords since before you were born. Happily for us, she is stupid and the Lords know it.”

“You told her that the boy is my son.”

“She would have learned it from her mentors eventually. There’s no point in hiding what will be known anyway. It’s how I have survived. For that same reason I sent the boy and his captor on their way and have convinced the other Preceptors that he is safely tucked away with trustworthy friends of mine. Lacking sufficient power to prevent the Lords’ hold on the boy, I appear to aid them. Meanwhile, I bide my time.”