by Carol Berg
“My grandfather said it is the Danae’s greatest secret. But when I walked into Gillarine yesterday and found it ruined…when I touched the earth in the cloisters…Gram, I felt the world broken. I know it sounds presumptuous. I’ve meager skills and a history of lies, but you must believe that every breath, every bone, every drop of my blood tells me that this breaking is cause of the world’s upheaval…the weather…the sickness…I’ll swear it on whatever you like.”
Someday, perhaps, someone might believe what I said without the backing of god-sworn oaths. My myriad swearings had my life tangled upside over and backside front.
“We did not doubt your sincerity, Valen. We just believed that no human action could compromise the Canon itself. We assumed your grandfather’s tale was but guilt speaking through madness. And now I’ve wasted this opportunity. I should have been better prepared. Ah, cursed be this weakness…inept…” The racking cough forced him to stop and lean on the wall. He slapped his hands against the stone in frustration, his reserve shattered for the first time since I’d known him.
“If all this is true,” he said, when he caught his breath at last, “if the Danae forget a place when it is corrupted and lost to the Canon, then how could Kol be here?”
“He follows me,” I said, able to answer that one question, at least. “I saw him the first time on the night I tried to escape from Gillarine. He waited in an aspen grove and offered his hand—tried to rescue me. Then he watched me every day of my punishment exhibition in the streets of Palinur. I even glimpsed him in a courtyard of my family’s house. I saw a Dané in Mellune Forest, too, but I’m not sure it was he. I didn’t know the one with the dragon on his face was Kol. Spirits of night, Clyste’s brother…he likely was the one who tried to drown us in the bog. My grandfather warned me that I was in danger from the Danae.”
Gram stared at me for a moment in the dim light, then rested his back against the passage wall and averted his eyes. I’d never met a more private man. “That makes no sense,” he said, collecting his scattered emotions. “Your grandfather is being punished for his crime and will continue to be until whatever he stole is returned. Thus his debt is being paid. The Danae would never take vengeance on others, even his family, unless they believed those others complicit in Janus’s crime. Their law—the Law of the Everlasting—forbids it.”
He ran his long fingers through his hair as if to drag ideas from his skull. “Danae justice is quite clear and quite specific. Everything is balance. Bargains. Exchanges. Think of what Kol said and how he said it. Death and life. Violation and restored memory. He clearly did not blame you for Clyste’s death. He would blame the one who did the murder. Perhaps he was already following you about when it happened. Yet he implied that you’ve raised the ire of other Danae…the judgment of the long-lived…and with your grandfather’s warning…” He looked up at me again. “Valen, do you have what Janus stole?”
“No!” I said. “I didn’t even know of my grandfather’s crime until a fortnight ago. And he refused to tell me what he took. If their ‘justice’ is so balanced, then why does Eodward’s betrayal bar us all from their realms?”
“I don’t think he meant all humans.” Shivering, Gram bundled his cloak tighter. “I’ve got to consider all this…inform Thane Stearc and see what he makes of it. Our plans may have to change. Come, we’d best get back.”
“Brother Valen!” As if in echo of Gram’s conclusion, Nemesio’s call bounced urgently through the passage. “Get out here now!”
“So you go back to Osriel?” said Gram as we hurried toward the light.
“I would rather do anything else. But I must honor my word or else—Well, I don’t know what would happen, but my word is the only thing I’ve ever held to. I promise you, I’ll be no good to him.”
He stopped me as we approached the mouth of the passage. “You said something similar back at Mellune. What do you mean?”
No need for him to know what my nivat-starved perversion was like to make of me. I pulled my arm from his hand. “Be well, Gram. Give the thane and his daughter my regards.”
“Teneamus, Valen,” he said.
We preserve—the Aurellian code word of the lighthouse cabal. Gram’s invocation of it expressed the sincerity of his concern for me. I had no answer for his kindness. “We’d best go before Nemesio bursts.”
It was as well I chose not to further compromise my vow of submission. When Gram and I stepped from the cleft into the open air, Nemesio and the donkey waited with Gram’s gray mare. Beside them stood Voushanti.
Chapter 3
No argument of mine could persuade Voushanti that I’d no intent to run. “His Grace will decide your punishment,” he said as he bound my hands to the donkey’s harness. “And you will be there to heed it.”
Though pale and quivering, Nemesio bore Voushanti’s impossible arrival with a straight spine and unbowed head. I should have warned the prior about Prince Osriel’s favored commander. I had seen Voushanti recover from terrible wounds in a matter of hours. I had witnessed his resiliency as we tramped day and night through the winter nightmare of Mellune Forest. More than once I had looked into the red core of his eyes and suspected he did not sleep. What common sleeping draft would affect such a man, if man he was?
At least the mardane showed no interest in exploring the cleft. Whether or not Prince Osriel was Sila Diaglou’s rival in the pursuit of chaos, the last thing I wanted to do was teach him a way to interfere with the Danae.
When we reached the flats, Voushanti dismissed Gram with a promise to report his interference both to Thane Stearc and Stearc’s liege lord Prince Osriel. The last I saw of the secretary, he was vanishing at a gallop into the frozen haze that had settled in the valley. Voushanti, the prior, the ass, and I slogged toward the abbey afoot.
With no silken cords binding my hands to stay the flow of magic, I could have unlocked the chain that linked my wrists to the donkey even with my limited skills. But in truth I could not summon the wits to work a spell. A storm of blue light filled my head—the image of the Dané as he danced out his grief. I had never imagined such expressive power in mere movement, as if his body formed words and music I could not hear. My own feet dragged like brutish anvils through the snow. My arms felt stiff as posts. Compared to his, my body was no more living than a wall of brick.
Remnants of our exchange swirled in my thoughts like water through a sluice. He’d said that I had cleansed the Well, as if it were some marvel. Yet I’d done naught but remove the dead boy, hardly difficult for a man of his strength.
Kol, the son of the Danae archon who had sheltered King Caedmon’s infant son more than a century ago…My mind balked at the imagining. My grandfather, a cartographer with a sorcerer’s bent, had discovered Caedmon’s heir living in the realm of the Danae—the realm of angels, legend called it. Life spent differently in Danae lands, for a century and a half after his royal father’s death, Eodward had just been passing from youth to manhood. A Karish hierarch and a high priest of the elder gods had persuaded the young man to return to Navronne and revive the wreckage of his father’s kingdom. Though Eodward had promised the Danae to return to them after only a few years, he never had. Navronne had needed her strong and honorable warrior king, who had freed her from the disintegrating Aurellian empire and a succession of invasions from the barbarian Hansker.
Three years ago, good King Eodward had died, abandoning Navronne to his three sons—a blustering brute, an effete coward, and my master, rival to the lord of the netherworld. Between my grandfather’s unexplained theft, Eodward’s betrayal of his word, and the depredations of the Harrowers, it was no wonder the Danae brooked no dealings with humankind.
Nemesio unlatched the wooden gate in the low eastern wall of the abbey. The prior had been silent on our return journey. Praying, I thought. Mourning. Deunor’s fire, Gerard… an unscholarly boy with a quick smile and an innocent heart. What punishment would be dreadful enough to requite this crime? Gildas…the Harrowers…
Sila Diaglou…I would see them brought to account for it.
As soon as we left the field path for the abbey walks, the monks began to gather, like blackbirds to a rooftop. Despite their anonymous robes and hoods, I recognized them by their shapes—short, tight Brother Sebastian; willowy Brother Bolene; squat, stooped Brother Adolfus—and by their hands, roughened by cold and hard work or stained indelibly by buckets of ink. These men, who had so kindly welcomed me as a vagabond into their brotherhood, offered no signs of blessing, greeting, or welcome. Why would I expect it? Most of them had last seen me a month past, when my sister had led me from the abbey with shackled feet and silkbound hands—a disgraced recondeur, named traitor to god and king, a liar and thief who had mocked their vows by pretending he could be worthy of their company, even for a season. And now…chained to the ass that carried Gerard’s body…as if I were responsible…My skin heated with shame.
“Set me loose,” I said to Voushanti through my teeth. “I’ll not run. Please. They’ll think I did this.”
But he wouldn’t until we reached the bedraggled garden maze in front of the church. As the brothers lifted the boy gently and carried him toward the lavatorium where they would clean and wrap him properly, Voushanti detached my chain from the ass and led me toward the guesthouse like a troublesome dog.
Philo and Melkire awaited us in the guesthouse bedchamber, dark rings about their eyes and glaring resentment pouring off them like steam from a lathered horse. Voushanti unlocked my manacles and jerked his ugly head to the fine clothes, still strewn on the bed, and a copper washbasin sitting beside the hearth. “Clean and dress yourself.”
Days of fear and frustration boiled over despite my best intents. “What, no whips? No dungeon? The abbey has a prison cell, you know. If I’m to be treated as a brainless dog, why not kennel me?”
Voushanti grabbed the laps of my cloak and dragged my head down to his, where I could not ignore the scarlet pits of his eyes. “I would gladly whip sense and respect into you, pureblood. Be sure of it. Your flesh is weak and your mind undisciplined. But our master has charged me to preserve your skin and your mind for his pleasure, and his will is our law. Now prepare yourself for his arrival.” He shoved me away.
I clamped my hands under my folded arms, fighting to control my anger. Deep in my gut an ember flared in warning. Before very long—a day or two at most—its fire would grow to encompass my whole body, triggering the hunger for blood-spelled nivat seed. Ravaged with guilt on the day Luviar had died, I’d sworn off the doulon—the enchantment that transformed fragrant nivat into an odorless black paste that warped the body’s experience of pain and pleasure. I’d thrown away my implements and the last of my nivat supply, so when the hunger came on me next, I had naught to feed it. That’s when I would go mad.
“Have we word of His Grace?” Voushanti blocked the narrow doorway.
“Santiso rode in not an hour since,” said Melkire. “He says the prince should arrive at any time. The other parties to the parley are expected tonight as well.”
As the three of them discussed horses, guard posts, and the best places to billet Osriel’s retinue, I stripped off my sodden garments. The water in the copper basin was tepid. A clean linen towel, many times mended, lay beside it. They’d left me no comb, but my hair had not grown much since it was trimmed to match my regrowing tonsure. I dunked my head in the basin and thought fleetingly of not pulling it out again.
I had to put the morning’s events aside for now. I needed to use the next hours to the cabal’s advantage. Perhaps I could acquire some notion of Osriel’s plans in this damnable war or learn the nature of his power. His mother had been pureblood and clearly he had developed his magic far beyond the weak capabilities of other mixed-blood Navrons. But I didn’t even know what parley was to happen here.
For three years, Osriel had sat on his gold mines in his mountainous principality of Evanore, weaving devilish enchantments while his half-brothers’ war ravaged their own provinces of Ardra and Morian. Theories abounded on why he raided his brothers’ battlefields and mutilated the dead—none of them pleasant. I had believed the stories of Osriel’s depravities exaggerated until the night when Prince Bayard of Morian had flushed his brother Perryn to Gillarine’s gates, slaughtering a hundred of Perryn’s Ardran soldiers along the way. Hellish, dreadful visions had descended on the abbey that night, and by morning every corpse lay under Osriel’s ensign and stared toward heaven eyeless. The monks had called it Black Night.
As I laced my chausses, Philo raced up the stair, snapped a salute, and reported Prince Osriel’s arrival. “The prior has given him his own quarters and offered any building save the church for his use. His Grace sent me to fetch you, Mardane.”
Voushanti eyed my half-dressed state. “Inform His Grace that I am unable to yield my charge until he summons his pureblood. I will deliver the sorcerer and my report at the same time.”
Philo pressed a clenched fist to his breast and bowed briskly.
I refused to rush my dressing. The clothes were of the sort expected of purebloods: a high-necked shirt of black and green patterned silk, ruched at neck and wrists, a spruce-green satin pourpoint, delicately embroidered in black and seeded with black pearls, and a gold link belt. The doeskin boots felt like gloves. Ludicrous apparel for wartime in a burnt-out abbey. But if my master wished me decked out like a merchants’ fair, so be it.
Voushanti’s impatience came near scorching my back, but eventually my hundred buttons were fastened and fifty laces tied. I lifted the claret cape and mask and raised my brows. He jerked his head in assent. So other ordinaries were to be present, not just my master and his household.
The lightweight cape of embroidered silk fastened at my right shoulder with a gold-and-ivory brooch, shaped like a wolf’s head. The mask, a bit of silk light as ash, slipped onto the left side of my face like another layer of skin and held its place without ties or bands of any kind. Someone had given my exact description to the one who had created and ensorcelled it. Of all pureblood disciplines, I most hated that of the mask.
Then we waited.
Though the great bronze bells had fallen from the church tower, the monks rang handbells to keep to their schedule of devotions and work. I would have preferred to get on with whatever vileness Osriel planned for me. It would save me fretting over the worthwhile tasks I ought to be attempting while I yet had a mind: rescuing Jullian, retrieving the book of maps, discovering where Sila Diaglou hid her supplies and trained her Harrower legions. I wasn’t even sure whether or not the lighthouse yet existed after the ruinous assault on Gillarine.
I had believed the magical domed chambers and their astonishing cache existed underground below the abbey library and scriptorium, but I’d seen no evidence of the downward stair in the rubble. Why hadn’t I asked Gram what had become of it? If Osriel chose to lock me away in one of his mountain fortresses, I might never learn. My contract with the prince, negotiated by my father and approved by the Registry, lacked the customary protections afforded more tractable pureblood progeny, thus allowing my master to do whatever he wished with me.
I slammed my fists against the window frame, rattling the glass in the iron casement. Voushanti snorted, but said naught.
By the time Philo brought the prince’s summons, Vespers had rung through the early dusk. The ginger-bearded soldier led Voushanti and me past the charred hollows of the west-reach undercrofts, where the fires had been so fierce that the entire upper structure of the lay brothers’ dorter had collapsed, and around behind the squat stone kitchen building to the refectory stair.
“His Grace will speak to the mardane first,” said Philo. “The pureblood is to wait inside the door, where he can be seen.” The ginger-haired warrior pulled on his helm, took up a lance propped against the wall, and joined Melkire in a proper alert stance flanking the wide oak door.
We entered the refectory halfway along one side of the long chamber. The barreled vault of the roof stood intact, but the tall wind
owpanes were broken and the pale yellow walls stained with smoke. The long tables and backless stools had been shoved together at the lower end of the cavernous hall.
The refectory had been my favorite place in the abbey. But no robust ale or steaming bowls of mutton broth sat ready to warm the belly on this eve. No beams of light streamed from the soaring lancet windows to warm the spirit. No grinning boys or teasing monks awaited to warm the heart. I splayed my five fingers and pressed my palm to my breast, praying Iero to welcome Gerard and to comfort Jullian, boys who had honored their god with such cheerful service.
Two braziers provided the only light or heat. They flanked a single plain wood chair set before the delicate stone window tracery that gaped empty at one end. There, robed and hooded as severely as any monk, our master awaited us.
“Stay here until you’re called,” muttered Voushanti.
An enigma, Voushanti. His touch left me queasy, and his glance induced me to spread my fingers in ward against evil. Yet for all his single-minded ferocity and spine-curling presence, the mardane had never harmed me. Together we had survived the ordeal in Mellune Forest.
He hurried across the worn wood floor and prostrated himself at Osriel’s feet—an elaboration more suited to an Aurellian emperor than a Navron prince. The prince motioned Voushanti up, but only as far as his knees. I could not hear what was said, but felt the Bastard’s anger stirring the shadows like the first breath of a storm wind.
If Voushanti’s presence disturbed my stomach, Prince Osriel’s disturbed my soul. My imagination conjured a thousand horrors beneath his hooded robe. Some said the prince was crippled; some said his body had been corrupted by his dealings with the Adversary.
The wind whistled and moaned through the broken windows, swirling the detritus of dust and glass that littered the floor. I twitched and fidgeted, fussed with my cloak, with my belt, with the iron latches of the lower windows. I strained to hear the monks’ Vesper singing down in the ruined church, and tried to recall the words of the psalm and the comfort they promised. Deunor’s fire…what was taking so long? Voushanti must be reciting every detail of the eight days since we had left Prince Osriel in Palinur. I tried not to imagine what punishments Osriel could devise for my morning’s misbehavior. My every sense, every nerve, felt stretched to breaking.