Breath and Bone tld-2

by Carol Berg

  Stearc jerked his head at Elene and snatched up his cloak. “Let’s be off, then.”

  “Not you, Thane. You are to remain here.” The prince pivoted on his heel. “You and Fedrol will detail your men as you see fit for the prior’s needs and for the security of the lighthouse and the brothers.”

  Stearc flushed and glared at me. “My lord, if this is punishment for my accusations—”

  “This is not punishment,” said the prince sharply. “We’ve no time for petty guilts and reprisals. Believe me when I say I would prefer to have your strong arm at my side. But Luviar has fallen. As the only living lighthouse ward-holder, your personal safety is paramount, and we’ve no time to transfer your charge to another. Thus, if you perceive the least threat to your person in these next weeks, you will entertain no foolish ideas of brave antics, but will run and hide, no matter the brothers’ safety or your daughter’s or mine. Do you understand me?”

  “Aye, Your Grace. Of course.” Stearc gritted his teeth and bowed.

  The prince shifted his attention to Elene, who looked as near jumping out of her skin as I felt. “Mistress, though it grieves me to say it, you cannot go with us either.”

  “I thought we had no time for petty reprisals!” she snapped. “I have not faltered in my duty to this cabal, no matter our personal disagreements. I have not hesitated.”

  “I would not think of underestimating your determination,” said the prince, as frosty as the windowpanes. “My only hesitation is for the dangers I must ask you to venture instead. Thanks to a few brave souls, Brother Victor lies safely at Renna. To move him was a risk, but not so much as leaving him in Palinur. Saverian will keep him alive if any physician in the world can manage it. Mistress Elene, I would ask you to meet Victor at Renna and take on the burden he and Luviar kept safe from Sila Diaglou. Saverian can work the necessary rite. We cannot leave your father the only ward-holder. Are you willing?”

  “You wish me to be a lighthouse warder?” Astonishment wiped Elene’s fine-drawn features clean of anger and outrage. “Of course…of course I will.”

  “Good.” The prince turned briskly to Voushanti while Elene was yet stammering. “Dispatch Philo and Melkire to safeguard Mistress Elene on her travels, Mardane. They’re our best, and if they remained with us…Well, I’d not wish them to confuse Thane Stearc’s secretary with their prince just yet.”

  Voushanti nodded, as did Elene, only a rosy flush remaining of her surprise.

  “I believe we have some time, if we take care,” said Osriel to all of us. “Sila Diaglou has some use for Valen beyond his grandfather’s book. As long as her attention is distracted with her own plans and she is left guessing as to mine, a small, fast party should be able to move unnoticed to intercept Gildas.”

  “Gildas knows I’ll come after Jullian,” I said. I wished I shared Elene’s determined composure. My knees squished like mud and my bowels churned like a millrace.

  “But you are Osriel the Bastard’s bound servant, and Osriel’s cruel games would never permit you such freedom,” said the prince. “Secrets and deceptions grant us opportunities that fate denies.”

  No one could have missed this reproof of Elene. But I could read the prince’s expression no better than any other time. His cool sobriety revealed no hostility.

  “Now that Gildas holds the book,” he continued, “Valen is our only hope to warn the Danae and enlist their help. As his safety is critical, and I’ve still some notion of ruling my father’s kingdom, Voushanti must keep the both of us alive through this venture.”

  Voushanti bowed. “How many men?”

  “Only us three.”

  “My lord, no!” Voushanti and Stearc erupted in unison. “Impossible…”

  Stearc argued himself hoarse about Osriel’s foolishness in taking a single bodyguard “no matter his exceptional talents.” Osriel allowed him to rant, but altered the plan not a whit. As Stearc moved from sputtering at Osriel to showering Elene with warnings and advice, the prince took up pen and paper to set his plan into motion.

  Osriel took Gildas’s threat too lightly in my opinion. The monk might believe me the Bastard’s bound servant, but he also knew how I felt about villains who abused children. Worse yet, he knew my weakness; he’d left a box of nivat seeds to taunt me. I’d destroyed the box and yet clung to the belief that I could manage a few more hours of sanity—long enough to set Osriel on the right path. I could not abandon the boy. I had sworn to protect him.

  Voushanti charged off to see to horses and supplies, and conversation shifted to a brisk discussion of message drops and rendezvous and other details that needed no input from me. As the moments slipped by, the knot in my belly launched a thousand threads of fire to snarl my flesh and bones. My companions and their concerns and, indeed, the entire world outside my skin began to recede, until they seemed no more than players and a flimsy stage. My time had run out.

  “My lord,” I whispered from my place by the window. It was all the voice I could muster from a throat that felt scorched. “I need to tell you…”

  No one heard me. Elene held Osriel’s sealed orders for his garrison at Renna and for this Saverian, his physician and house mage. Voushanti returned and hoisted the leather pack that contained the prince’s medicines. Osriel donned his heavy cloak and tossed his extra blanket to Voushanti, telling him to pack it. “A dainty flower such as I cannot afford to leave extra petals behind.”

  My body burned. I tried to unfasten my cloak and padded tunic, but my hands would not stop shaking.

  Soon Osriel and Stearc were laughing. They embraced fiercely. Elene clasped her father’s hands, biting her lip as she mouthed sentiments I could not hear.

  I fumbled with the iron window latch and shoved the casement open far enough I could gulp a breath of frigid air to cool my fever.

  “Magnus, it’s time to go.”

  “Magnus Valentia!”

  The calls came as from ten quellae distant. I lifted my anvil of a head, sweat dribbling down my temples. The four of them stared at me.

  “What’s wrong, Valen?” said the prince.

  “I can’t,” I said, pressing one arm to my belly as a vicious cramp tied my gut in a knot. “It’s too late. Gildas knew—” But I could not blame Gildas for this betrayal. He had merely taken advantage of my own sin; the excess nivat he’d given me in Palinur had but sped up what was going to happen anyway. “I’m afraid I’m no good to you after all.”

  “Are you ill, pureblood?” Voushanti dropped the satchel. “You should have spoken earlier.”

  I shook my head, as waves of insects with barbed feet swarmed my skin. “You’d best go now. Retrieve the book, or you’ll have to discover another way to the Danae.”

  The prince appeared in front of me. Though his years numbered only six-and-twenty, fine lines crisscrossed his brow and the skin about his eyes. Concern settled in the creases as in a familiar place. “You seemed well enough yesterday. Have you some hidden injury? We can fetch Brother Anselm.”

  When he touched my chin, I jerked away. But trapped in the window niche, I could not evade him. I closed my eyes, though behind my eyelids lay naught but flame. “No, my lord. A disease.”

  “But not a new one.” I felt his gaze penetrate my fever like a spear of ice.

  My molten gut churned. “It comes on me from time to time.”

  “Have you medicines for it? How long will it hinder you? A day? A week?” Spoken with the understanding of a man who had dealt with illness every day of his life. Did his remedies skew his mind until he could think of naught else, until they became indistinguishable from the disease? Did his salves and potions leave him muddleheaded so that he killed the people he was trying to help? I doubted they tempted him to slash his flesh or scald his feet just to make the healing more pleasurable.

  “You’re our best hope to reach the Danae, Valen. We’ll get you what you need. Just tell me.”

  There it was. The temptation I feared most.

  The doul
on hunger sat inside my head like the Adversary himself, whispering its seductions. One spell and you can hold together for a few days…help them rescue Jullian…retrieve the book. Then they won’t need you anymore, and you’ll have kept your vow as best you could. Too bad you threw the enchanted mirror away—so easy to do when your gut is not on fire—but this devil prince can surely enspell another. And he’ll have a supply of nivat as a gift for the Danae. Surely…

  The fiery agony was my disease. For all these years, no matter its torment, no matter how I rued my folly, cursed the stars, or told myself otherwise, deep inside the darkest core that held a man’s unspoken sins, I had welcomed its pain in aid of its remedy. My chest clenched with hunger. My loins ached with need no woman could satisfy. Saliva flooded my mouth. No amount of washing had removed the scent of nivat that clung to my skin, to my fingers that had opened the little box Gildas had left me. So enticing…

  “Valen?”

  Luviar had died an unspeakable death because the doulon had left me slow-witted and confused. Brother Victor lay half dead and Jullian was captive because servicing my need demanded my first and clearest stratagems, and every other matter must yield to whatever the doulon made of me. Nivat gave me an illusion of control, but I knew better. A cramp wrenched my back like an iron hook.

  “You cannot help me. You must not.” Saints and angels, make him believe it, for you’ll never be able to repeat these words. My darkest core prayed he would not listen.

  “Look at me, Valen.” His icy fingers shook my chin. “Open your eyes. I am your lord and your bound master. I command you tell me what’s wrong.”

  Best let him see the raging hunger. Best see his reaction in turn, to crush hope and understand my fate. I allowed his clear gray gaze to capture mine, then spoke so that only he could hear. “The doulon.”

  “Ah.”

  He dropped his hand but not his eyes, his expression such a strange compounding of comprehension, curiosity, and calculation, I could not read it. But at least I saw no judgment. Perhaps a man who enslaved souls saw no perversion in teaching the body to crave pain in order to release one moment’s ecstasy and gain a few weeks’ comfort.

  “You are full of surprises, friend Valen.” His voice was soft. Puzzled. Kind. Almost as if he were Gram alone and not the other. “But this one—”

  He turned away abruptly, leaving me slumped against the window, where I tried to inhale enough cold air I would not erupt in flames. I was relieved to hear him dispatching the others about their duties, telling them he would set out after Gildas as planned. Good. Maudlin sympathy was no better an asset for a worthy king than self-righteous judgment. Somehow it made my shame easier to bear that he was proceeding with the kingdom’s business.

  Eyes closed again, stomach heaving, I slid slowly down the wall, trying to decide what to do with myself once these four were dispersed on their missions. I could not remain in the guesthouse. Stearc would not be so matter-of-fact about this betrayal as his prince was. Horrid to think of the thane filling my last hours of reason with bullheaded insults. But I also hated the thought of burdening the brothers…

  “Come, come, you’re not going to get off so easy.” A firm hand caught me under the arm and halted my downward slide. “Stand up, Valen. Gather what’s left of your wits and come with me. We must find our young friend and your book and this villain who thinks to use them.”

  “Your Grace, if I could—please believe me—I would. Do you have any idea—?” I lowered my voice so the others would not hear. “Doulon hunger destroys mind and body. I’ll be of no use to you.”

  “I have a very good idea. I was born with saccheria.”

  Saccheria! No wonder reports named him a cripple. Joint fever, a rare and brutal rogue of a disease, could crack a man’s limbs or bend them into knots. Even if the first bone-twisting onslaught of fever didn’t kill you, you were never free of it. It would attack again and again, vanishing abruptly for weeks or months at a time before the next assault, manifesting itself in a hundred cruel variants—one time as grotesque skin lesions, the next as mind-destroying fever, a lung-stripping cough, or a palsy that transformed a robust warrior into a bed-ridden infant who fouled his sheets. Always lurking…always unexpected…always, always painful.

  He released me as soon as I was standing again. “One cannot live as I have without learning every remedy the world provides for pain. And the first and most difficult thing you learn is that there exists no remedy without cost. I was fortunate that my father forbade me try nivat or poppy until I was old enough to understand their price. I won’t give you either one.” His calm assurance eased even so blunt a condemnation. “Unfortunately for you, I also know you’re not going to die in the next few days.”

  “I’ll want to,” I said. And even if I shed the doulon hunger, I would have to face the disease itself.

  He pulled my cloak around my shoulders and tugged it straight. “So you will. But I won’t allow it, and perhaps you will have accomplished something useful before you expire.”

  Chapter 7

  “I can’t eat this,” I yelled, knocking away the spoon, spilling hot soup over my clothes, my blanket, and my unfortunate companion. “Tastes like drunkard’s piss.” I rolled to one side and drew my knees to my chest, the sound of my own croaking voice threatening to burst my eyeballs. I was shivering so violently I could not catch hold of the blanket to draw it over me, and so lay exposed to the frigid evening.

  One of my tormentors threw the blanket over me—over my head, so that every breath was tainted with the stench of horse, smoke, vomit, and my unclean body. Moaning, I clawed at the damp wool to get it off my face before I could not breathe at all.

  “Just stick a knife in me,” I said between gulps of the frosty air that froze the slime leaking from my nose. “It’s quicker than poisoning or suffocation.” Quicker than devouring oneself from the inside out.

  “I give you no leave to die. You vowed without reservation that you would not run away from me. Remember?”

  My chief tormentor was no more than a shadowed outline between me and the fire. I closed my eyes and clung to his voice. Calm. Cruel. Kind. The fragile thread of reason that held my body and mind together. Days…blessed angels, how many days since I could think, since I could move without screaming, since I could sleep? And now it was almost night again, and we lay on a bleak hillside in a forest of charred trunks, all that remained of a spruce and aspen forest. I had tracked Gildas and Jullian into this desolation somewhere west of Gillarine, but I could not have said where.

  “Tell me, Valen, what is it you do when you put your hands on the earth? Do you work a spell to find the way? Or do you ask…someone…something…to show you…as with a prayer? Or is it something else altogether?” Gram…Osriel. Of course I knew the one who held me on his leash. It was just difficult to remember the two were the same man. “Answer me, Valen.”

  “Don’t know. I feel. I see. It hurts.” I swiped at my face with my trembling hand, only to sneeze again—a great wet gobbet of a sneeze. Samele’s tits, I was disgusting. I hunched tighter as the sneezing set off another barrage of cramps. Chokesnakes writhed in my belly, clamping their wirelike bodies about my stomach, liver, and gut. The two swallows of piss soup I’d got down came ravaging back up my gullet, as did everything my companions tried to shove down me.

  When I was done with the latest bout of retching, a warm wet rag wiped my face. “I’ve seen that the seeking pains you, as does everything just now. But Voushanti says it didn’t seem to distress you in Palinur or Mellune Forest. So perhaps when you are yourself again, it will be painless again.”

  The prince’s patient baritone never changed. If I could find a blade, I might slip it between his ribs just to see if the next time he said, “Tell me, Valen,” it might sound something different. But my eyes watered so profusely, the world and its contents were never in the places I expected them, and my two companions hid their weapons from me.

  “Please let me sleep,”
I whispered, rolling tighter, clutching my blanket to my chest, trying to hold still so the cramps would ease. “Have mercy.”

  “I’ll not give you what you want. I told you that. Sleep will come when it will. Perhaps later tonight. Now it’s time to search for Jullian again. You told us this afternoon that we were close. You made me promise to force you to this again when we reached higher ground.”

  No…no…no! Impossible when rats fed on my brain, when my parched soul shriveled, when marvelous, glorious life had shrunk to this frozen, wretched, burning hell.

  “Come, Valen, will you try?” Ever and always patient.

  “Aye, lord. Just help me move.”

  The two of them unfolded me, supported me as I knelt beside a patch of cleared earth, and then gently unclenched my fists and laid my shaking palms on the cold ground.

  “Find the boy, Valen. You are gifted beyond any man I know. You’ve kept us close these four days, though we’ve traveled in entirely unlikely directions. This child, your young brother, stolen by a traitor who would use him to destroy you…”

  Somewhere in the ragged, hollow shell of my being, where the shreds of reason, talent, and sense had collapsed like the walls of Gillarine, anger smoldered. When my tormentor’s voice touched that ember, I could grasp my anger, use it to steady my shattered nerves, which in turn gave life to my magic.

  Where are you, Archangel? I promised to protect you. Where?

  My will drew my mind into the earth, and I sought through soil and roots, frozen now, the cold penetrating deeper than these lands had known since before men walked the earth. The roots tore at my mind’s fingers like metal thorns, the dirt and rocks scraped like ground glass, leaving my soul raw and my gut bleeding. But anger held me together, and I swept my inner vision across and through the landscape, seeking the footsteps of the traitor and the boy…and discovered they had diverged. Where are you, boy? Saints and angels, if I but had a drop of his blood to link a path…

  I poured my soul into the seeking, existed as worm, as beetle, as root, listening and smelling and feeling the cold grit as I groped for some hint of human footsteps. Gildas had led us on a lunatic’s path. This high, rocky wasteland had welcomed few humans, but hosted every kind of wild goat, squirrel, and rock pig for generation upon generation. Most of them dead now. A sickness festered in this desolation.