Free Tides of Darkness by Judith Tarr Page B

wind.
    Daros groaned and rolled onto his back. His eyes narrowed against the light, but he did not flinch or cover them.
    Movement caught Merian’s eye. A pair of priests stood staring at them. Both were young, in the robes of novices; their eyes were wide, their mouths open in astonishment. One of them held a basket of flowers, the other clutched an armful of clean linens. They had come to tend the altar.
    She rose stiffly. The novice with the flowers dropped onto his face, hissing at his companion to do likewise. “Lady!” he bleated. “Lady, forgive, we didn’t recognize you, we—”

    â€œPlease,” she said, cutting across his babble. “Go on with what you were doing.”
    He took it as an order, and no doubt as a sacred trust. The young and eager ones invariably did. Daros, to her relief, said nothing; he creaked even more than she, and when he followed her from the shrine, he walked lame. He did not complain, which rather surprised her. She would have expected, at the very least, an acid commentary on the ailments of mages.
    Her aches eased as she walked, though the void in the heart of her felt as if it would never heal. He said nothing of what he might be suffering, if indeed he felt anything at all. He was not bound to Gates as she had been; the Heart of the World was no great matter to him as it was to her—and as it would be to every mage of Gates in this world.
    She had taken the inner ways of the temple, away from the eyes of priests and the faithful; there was not even a servant to stop and stare. They descended by narrow steps into a maze of tunnels, lit by a wisp of magelight that bobbed ahead of them.
    Daros stumbled. She was almost too late to catch him. His weight dragged at her; his breath rasped in her ear. He had overtaxed himself—fool; child. But she was worse than that, for allowing him to do it.
    There was nothing for it but to press on with what speed she could. The urgency in her had come close to panic. It took all the discipline of both mage and priest to keep walking, and not to drop the stumbling, gasping boy and run back into the light.
    An eon later, though not so long by the turning of the sun, they came out at last in a forgotten corner of the palace. There was still some distance to go before they were truly safe; she paused in the dim and dusty cellar, plotting her path from a memory decades old.
    She heard no footstep, sensed no presence, and yet her hackles rose. She could not whip about: Daros impeded her. She had to turn slowly, every sense alert, braced to drop him and leap if she must.
    She nearly collapsed in relief. Her stepbrother lifted Daros in strong
arms, taking no notice of his feeble protests, and said, “The others are in the autumn garden. Can you walk that far?”
    â€œEasily,” she said.
    Hani’s glance raked her mistrustfully, but he shrugged, sighed, turned to lead her onward.
    Â 
    The autumn garden grew in a corner of the palace wall, where the sun was warmest in that season, and there was shelter from the first blasts of winter. Flowers grew there even into the dark of the year; the fountains flowed later than in any other of the gardens, and birds sang long after they had left that part of the world.
    It was nearly summer-warm when Merian came there, the sun shining in cloudless heaven, the water singing into the tiers of stone basins. This world knew nothing of darkness or loss—not yet. It was almost painful in its beauty.
    By the lowest of fountains, on the porch of the little house that ornamented the garden, her mother sat with Urziad and Kalyi and the high priestess of the temple with her golden torque and her eyes that, though blind, could pierce to the heart. Their faces mirrored the shock that seemed set indelibly in hers. That they were alive and conscious spoke of their strength and the strength of their power. Through their eyes she could see the losses: mages dead or broken, Gates