by Carol Berg
More than the barren, windswept slope separated this house—where I was kept—from the fortress. These clean open arches, the finely carved ceilings, polished woods, and expansive windows were altogether unlikely for an Evanori war lair.
Of course, Osriel himself made no more sense than this house. It would have been easy to dismiss him as a cynical and unprincipled sorcerer, the most skilled manipulator of men I had ever encountered, able to convince abbots and nobles that he held the interests of Navronne preeminent, while using cruelty and torment to ingratiate himself with the lord of hell. Yet I knew the answer to his mystery was not so simple. He had risked his own life on our last venture, not just to retake Gildas and the book, but for Jullian, whom wise men would name the least of our cabal. And some quality in the prince had reached me through pain and madness and kept me from losing my mind. No matter how much I wished to distance myself from his red lightning and blood-marked rituals, I owed him a debt.
I snatched up the green sash and knotted it about my waist. I’d found it along with a knee-length tunic and wool leggings in the carved clothes chest at the foot of the bed. True to her promise, Saverian had sent a serving man with a wooden dish heaped with bread, cheese, and dried apples. I had made it through one rubbery slice of apple before my rebellious stomach halted further attempts. She had come herself an hour later. Inspected my tongue and eyes, taken more blood, sat at the table to write extensive notes in a worn book. She had refused to say when I could travel or whether anyone was out searching for a captive child.
Gods…Jullian. The thought of him held by Harrowers tore at my heart. Unfortunately this past hour had left me no nearer choosing a course of action. I had sworn not to run. Yet, did a man’s oath bind when the one who’d sworn it discovered he was something altogether different than he believed? Not entirely human. I kept staring out the window half hoping, half terrified to see a Dané with a dragon on his face. My uncle. Holy Mother…
“Hsst! Valen! Over here.” The whisper came from the corner beyond the empty table and a yellow painted washing stand stacked with towels.
My heart’s stuttering calmed when Elene poked her head through a heavy curtain woven in colorful stripes. Against the rich greens and blues, her complexion took on the color of whitewash. She beckoned me to join her. Not at all a difficult summons to obey. Truly the woman was more addictive than nivat, especially as I now had a true memory of her unclothed, instead of mere imaginings. The truth outshone the image as an angel outshines a frog.
“Great gods be thanked,” she said softly, inspecting me from head to toe, her very presence lifting my spirits. “Saverian told me I’d not harmed you, but I kept imagining a great charred dent in your skull.”
I spread my arms and twirled about, then ducked my head so she might view its integrity. “Your weapon never touched me. Rather, it’s I who must apol—”
“Valen, you must not tell anyone what you told me. Please, promise me. I beg you.”
I could not help but smile at this ferocious reversal of her earlier indignation. Glancing about to ensure no weapon was at hand, I spoke softly. “So it’s true, then?”
“By the Mother, promise me! On your word—the same oath you gave Osriel!”
Though I could foresee no circumstance that would make me betray such a confidence, the prospect of one more binding oath filled me with misgiving. I was already hamstrung by my submission to Osriel. Yet I did need a friend in this house, and I could well understand her desperation. An unexpected pregnancy was no happy news for an unwed girl of any parentage. So I raised my hand.
“I could never be such a madman as to betray the confidence of a daughter of Evanore. But if it eases one worry, mistress, then by the Mother I swear you my silence without reservation. And perhaps in return you’ll be kind enough not to mention my…indiscretion…of this morning to any who might take offense.” I didn’t need irate warlords drawing practice targets on my hide.
She rolled her eyes. “I’m hardly likely to speak of it. Remember you are the lunatic, not I. Well…clearly I am, as well…but you can be sure my tongue is mute. I told Saverian you’d made an advance. In the confusion of your illness, of course. I had to report your…condition. For your sake. You can be sure the frost witch will bait us with it, but she’ll not tell anyone else. Though she’s wholly Osriel’s creature, it suits her to keep her patients’ counsel. She’d not have them withhold information she needs to succeed in her work.”
This barren bluntness belied any assumption of a womanly confederacy.
“So, what of you, lady? Will the man be upright about all this? What will you do?” Though I was ferociously curious, I chose not to risk Elene’s wrath by asking who had begotten the child. She lived in a world of men. One glance from her and she could have her pick. Her fury had not implied an unconsenting liaison, which precluded any temptation for noble reprisal on my part. But jealousy could easily lock my fingers around the damnable oaf’s neck. Better not to know.
“I should have some time before anyone will guess—except perhaps Saverian. And I’ll just stay out of her way. Whatever must be done, be sure no man will decide for me.”
She beckoned me to duck my head again and startled me with a ferocious kiss planted square atop my head. “You’ve a good heart, Valen. The Mother shield you from your master’s vile works.”
Brisk footsteps echoed from the main passage. Elene paled. Stung by her warning, I caught her shoulder before she could duck beyond the striped drapery. “The prince…Voushanti…all these warnings…I feel as if I’m running blind down the road to hell. Someone needs to explain what I should fear, and you’re the only person I trust to be honest with me.”
Her brown eyes flamed amber. Resolution stamped her face. “You’re right. But later tonight…during the warmoot. This last night is mostly ceremony. The main gates of the fortress face westerly. When the lords start singing, get you to the rock gate behind the east end of the hall, and I’ll show you what to fear. Now, please…”
I released her, and she vanished. Snatching up a towel from the painted stand, as if I’d been washing, I spun in place and greeted my master as he hurried into the chamber. Garbed in an ash-gray tunic and black leggings no finer than my own, his hair tied back by a purple ribbon, he appeared more servant than prince. His pleasure as his first glance assessed me reflected that part of him I would ever name Gram.
I sank to one knee and touched fingers to forehead. “My lord.”
“Will you never cease to astonish me, friend Valen?” he said, cocking his head to one side as he gazed down at me. A smile played over his fine countenance—noble Eodward’s handsome features writ on a darker, frailer, sterner canvas. “I expected to find you weak and woolly on your waking day.”
I dared not meet his eyes. Had our king known what his favored son played at? “I am both of those things, lord.”
He touched my shoulder. “Come, get up. I won’t keep you long. I’ve a hundred warlords in my hall, drinking my ale and spoiling for battle. Do you feel up to a walk?”
I held out my incapable fingers. “As long as you don’t expect me to seek out our route.”
He laughed quite genuinely and motioned me toward the passage. “That’s Saverian’s doing. She found silkbinding your hands tiresome and dodging your nightmares dangerous. You’ll learn, as have we all, to avoid annoying Saverian. Thus you must tell me promptly if we need to get you back to bed. I doubt I could carry you, even underfed as you are.”
Despite his claim of warlords waiting, we strolled down the passage—the very one I had envisioned so clearly in my madness, even to the patterns and colors of the woven hangings. Above every arch hung a shield of beaten gold, each shaped as an animal—a fox, a lion, a boar, even fanciful beasts such as a dragon, phoenix, or centaur. One was a gryphon, its feathered wings spread from its lion’s body, as on the Cartamandua family crest.
Bearing left around a corner, we arrived at a long gallery where weavings no longer blo
cked the arches. On one side of the gallery, the openings held paned windows that overlooked the descending slope, the grim fortress, and the grand mountain landscape; on the other, the openings stood unblocked, accessing a courtyard garden almost as large as Gillarine’s cloister garth. Trees, shrubbery, and flowers grew in healthy profusion in air that held the warmth of late spring rather than winter’s bite.
The notion struck me that I’d mistaken Elene’s reference to my stay at Renna as a mere tenday. But when I looked to the sky to verify the season, I gasped in wonder. A dome of faceted glass separated us from the gray sky. Snowflakes flurried and danced, melting when they touched the intricately patterned glass.
“It’s very like the domes in the lighthouse,” I said, recalling the twin mosaic vaults of colored brilliance that had imbued the storehouse of books and tools with magic and majesty.
“This was an early experiment,” said the prince. “It told me that what I wanted to do was possible. Luviar and Victor had created the underground chambers early on—did you know that Victor is a pureblood stonemason?—but his design was very…monkish. We had no time to cache works of art, but I felt our lighthouse ought to include something of no worth beyond its beauty. We’d not want humankind to forget something of such importance.”
Once I would have marked this unsentimental declaration as the wisdom of ever-sensible Gram, and reveled at the new knowledge he’d let slip. Now I worried at his purpose, sure his every utterance hid meanings within meanings. And, too, a knife of guilt twisted in my heart at the reminder of my forgetfulness.
“Brother Victor…how fares he?” I’d heard a sick man struggling to breathe and wondered if it was the little monk. “I’d like to visit him. And Jullian…have we word of his fate? Plans for his rescue?”
His expression grave, Osriel clasped his hands behind his back. “We’ve had no further word of Jullian, and no word on the negotiations between my brother and Sila Diaglou. Be assured I remain committed to getting the boy back safely. As for Brother Victor…he improves daily, but his injuries were dreadful. Saverian has kept him asleep as she works to repair them. We hope he’ll wake again when they’ve healed enough to cause him less pain. Best leave him in peace for now.”
I was hardly surprised at his putting off my visit to the chancellor. “Later, then. As soon as he’s able. I would never have guessed Victor pureblood.”
“A humble man is a rarity among purebloods.”
“True,” I said, glancing at the magnificence above us. “For certain, I am no judge of men.”
I longed to pour out my myriad questions to my friend Gram, but I dared not expose my ignorance to Osriel. Which was a wholly foolish sentiment. After weeks of raving mania, what part of me could be left private?
We ambled down one of the paved walkways that interlaced the garden, pausing when we came upon a fountain tucked into a grove of elders. Water bubbled from the feet of a statue depicting a tall, nude woman with an eagle taking flight from her upraised hand. Beside her, a sculpted man bent one knee and stretched the other leg behind him in a straight line with his muscled back. His fingers touched the center of his forehead in a gesture of respect, as his stony eyes gazed on a small tree bursting from the earth just beyond his bent knee. My skin slithered over my bones when I noted the fine whorls and images carved into the figures’ marble flesh.
The prince stood at my shoulder. “My obstinate physician declines to reveal what the two of you discussed this morning. So I must ask if you remember our last conversation?”
I stared at the statues and forced my voice steady, as if on every day I spoke the unthinkable. “Janus de Cartamandua-Magistoria sired me. The Dané named Clyste was my mother.”
“It explains a great deal, don’t you think?” he said. “So you believe it’s true?”
“Yes.” Though questions piled upon questions, like a flock of sheep at a narrow gate, each pushing to get through. “I wonder…did they lock her away in the earth for lying with a human or for allowing a human to steal me away?”
I stole a treasure they did not value, but could not forgive the loss of, so Janus had said. I could not yet think of the old man as my father.
“Almost certainly the latter,” said the prince. “My father and the monk Picus left Aeginea well before you were born. But I have Picus’s journals, where he recorded all he learned of the Danae. He wrote that once past the third change—the passage of regeneration—a Dané is capable of mating and can choose his or her partners at will. As long as a joining is consensual, none may gainsay it. Certainly for Clyste to conceive a child could have been no accident. Danae females are fertile on the four days of season’s change and no other. No matter that her family, the archon, and every other Dané would disapprove her choice, we must assume she chose Janus, and she chose to make a child with him.”
They’ll never have thee. I saw to it. The mad old man’s words hung in my memory like stars in the firmament, sharpening the familiar aching void in my chest. Of a sudden, no caution could restrain my questions. Half my life had been denied me, the other half twisted out of all recognition, and this prince held some answers at least. “Then why would she let him take me? Everything he said leads me to believe she consented.”
“Danae dislike halfbreeds”—he squatted beside the fountain and ran his fingers over the marble branches of the new-birthed tree—“but they believe no one else has any business raising one of their blood. Unlike Aurellian purebloods.” He flashed a grin up at me. “Once our blood is proved tainted, the Registry cares naught what becomes of us. Perhaps you’d like to send the Registry a notice of your changed status?”
I had already considered that. “They’d only believe it another of my lies.”
“Mmm…likely so.” He removed a stone cup from a niche beside the fountain, scooped water from the font, and drank it down. I declined his offer of the cup, and he replaced it in its niche.
“So Clyste’s child vanished,” he continued. “The Danae believed the child belonged with them and punished her. But as to Clyste’s purpose…A Danae mother is responsible for her child’s education, including preparation for the remasti. She selects the child’s vayar—the dance master. This preparation is the most serious and sacred duty among the long-lived. Perhaps she meant for Janus to bring you back at some time.”
I hadn’t even known the right questions to ask that night in Palinur, and my grandfather’s ragged mind had skipped from one thing to another. But there had been something…“He said she bade him destroy his maps to keep other humans away from the Danae lands, because he could ‘keep his promises’ without them. And he said he’d failed her. But that could mean a thousand things.” It was all very well to explore past intents, but the future concerned me more. “Why did he say I would be free when I turned eight-and-twenty? What happens then?”
“Four times in their lives—at the ages we would name seven, fourteen, one-and-twenty, eight-and-twenty—Danae undergo these bodily changes they call remasti or holy passages. We know little about the passages, save that each results in new gards—their skin markings. They consider the whole thing very private. Most of what Picus learned of them came from the confidences of one disaffected Dané female—a halfbreed girl named Ronila who left Aeginea before making her fourth change. He knew only the results of the fourth: The newly matured Danae are bound to a sianou and allowed to dance in the Canon itself for the first time, and from that day they are free to walk the world as they choose, subject to no person, law, or duty save the Law of the Everlasting as interpreted by their archon.”
“But Janus had no intention of me living as a Dané. He wanted me to stay clear of them until I passed my birthday.” ’Tis no life for thee, he had told me. “Perhaps that was it. He had promised Clyste that he would send me back and then changed his mind.”
Osriel nodded as he picked dead blooms from the violets massed about the fountain. “Therein, too, lies freedom of a sort. Picus wrote that those Danae who choose not
to undergo the fourth remasti, or are forbidden to do so, or are incapable of it, lose the power to become one with a sianou. They revert to an ordinary life span—longer than humans live, but far short of the centuries a mature Dané would expect. It sounds as if you will become wholly human on your birthday. That must be what Janus wished.”
“There must be something more,” I said. “He told me I would be the greatest of the Cartamandua line. He said our family would be powerful beyond dreaming.” Dawning understanding knotted my hands and heated my cheeks. For a lifetime I had hated Janus de Cartamandua with every scrap of my strength. But he had given up his mind to the Danae, and in the throes of despair and weak-minded sentiment, I had come to believe he’d done it to protect me from harm. But now matters became clear. It was never for me—child or man. All was for the Cartamandua bloodline. “He must have thought staying free would strengthen my bent or change it in some way. He thought I would make our family ‘magnificent.’”
“Would that we could question Picus. But not long after he and my father returned to Navronne, the monk vanished without a word to anyone. Come along.” The prince motioned for me to walk with him. “What happens or does not happen on your birthday is not the only mystery to unravel. Would you like to hear what I know of your mother?”
“Very much.” I needed to move, to walk if I could not run.
“Clyste was my father’s foster sister, making you and me cousins of a sort. I hope that does not disturb you too awfully.” We walked out of the garden, through the airy passages, and into a series of shuttered rooms. “She was daughter of the Danae archon Stian and beloved of every Danae for her joyful spirit and for the skill and glory of her dancing. When Clyste came into her season for her fourth change, the powerful Dané who had guarded the Well for time unremembered announced that he was tired and ready to yield his sianou to a younger guardian. All believed that the Well, a place revered among the Danae, had chosen Clyste. Kol told Picus that she brought an intelligence and a perfection to the Canon that the long-lived had rarely seen.”