Free The Golden Key by Kate Elliott, Melanie Rawn, Jennifer Roberson Page B

do’Verrada’s face in the painting, the bloodlessness of shock and stark realization that nothing could be changed; that all was altered forever. “’Vedra—
I
did it!”
    It confounded her; he had gone ahead somewhere without her. “Did what?”
    It hissed in the galerria. “Killed him!”
    “
Tomaz
?”
    “’Vedra—oh, ‘Vedra—”
    “But—how?”
    He trembled. She had never seen him so frightened. Even in the closet, in the secret chamber above the Crechetta, where terrible things were done. “You saw how they painted his eyes white in the
Peintraddo
—” he said, “—how they painted his hands all twisted—”
    “Bone-fever,” she murmured. “Yes. They painted out his eyes and made his hands over into those of an old man.”
    “It
happened
, Saavedra! You saw it! You saw what became of him!”
    She had. Oh, Matra, she had. And so quickly, so very quickly: one moment whole, vital; exuberantly, defiantly Tomaz, and the next … “But they didn’t paint him
dead.
”
    “
I
killed him.”
    “Oh, Matra—oh,
Sario
—”
    “I did it, ‘Vedra.” His dark eyes had gone black, utterly black, so that he was, in his own way, blind as Tomaz had been, though with horror rather than with the milk-blindness that affected so many old ones. Black eyes, white face, and a tensile trembling that threatened, she feared, to shatter his very bones. “I made him die.”
    “How do you know?” It was all she could think to ask. She knew him, comprehended the terrible talent that drove him in his dreams, equally awake as asleep. “Sario—how
can
you know?”
    “I thought to burn the painting, but I had seen how what was painted was inflicted upon the body, and I didn’t want to
hurt
him—”
    “Sario—”
    “—so I didn’t burn it after all … I just put a knife in the canvas where I thought his heart would be.” His eyes were black, so black, infinitely black, like a fire burned out and doused with too much water. “But—I missed. I went to him, to see … and he was still alive. Wounded, but alive, because I was not precise enough … and so, and so—” He swallowed so heavily she saw his throat convulse. “I burned it after all. He told me that would work.”
    All she could say was his name. No question, no statement; only his name, in horror and disbelief. Of him. For him.
    “They don’t know yet. They haven’t found it yet. But they will.”
    She put her hands over her face, rubbing, scrubbing, stretching it this way and that, hiding from the world, the truth, his matter-of-fact retelling, even as she hid her own response from him. Fear for him. Of him.
    “’Vedra—what do I do?”
    It was appeal. From him. He was infinitely young again, a boy of eleven years, prodigiously talented, demonstrably Gifted, but a boy. Who had done a terrible thing.
    And now he pleaded with her to tell him what to do.
    She took her hands away at last. “No one knows.”
    “They haven’t found the painting yet—or what remains of it.”
    “And Tomaz?”
    Even his lips were white. “I haven’t looked.”
    “Looked where?”
    “Where he was. In the secret chamber. Where we were.”
    “He was
there
?”
    “They put him there.”
    “Are you certain he’s dead?”
    “He told me … he told me to destroy the painting. And he would—be released.” He bit deeply into his bottom lip. Beneath the surface, blood fled. “I’m afraid to look.”
    “Then you don’t
know
—”
    “He said it would kill him! He said he
wanted
it!”
    Her chest hurt. Her belly and head felt all hollow, insubstantial, emptied of contentment with all but the small complaints of insignificant lives. “Then—we have to find out. We have to know for certain.”
    “They’ll find out. They’ll find
out
—and do the same to me!”
    Saavedra stared at him. She had never before seen Sario afraid of anything. “If he is dead—
if
he’s dead, they will find out. And the painting …” She swallowed back the knot in her