by Carol Berg
For as far as I could see, the ridge top had been hacked away, gouged and broken into a shallow bowl a quellé wide, at least, seamed with trenches and pocked with dark holes. Broken troughs and sluices, iron wheels, and snarls of ancient rope rotted or rusted amid heaps of crushed rock. Chiseled slabs lay tilted and broken beside a monstrous quern and a cracked mortar broader than my armspan.
But it was not the ugly spoil heaps or grinding stones that colored my soul the same bruised gray as the unnatural haze and made me want to run far from this place. All the grief of Evanore lay here. All the anger. The pent emotions I had felt on the wind, and those I had sensed when first I looked upon Osriel’s land, were but goosedown to the leaden weight of sorrow and fury that settled on my spirit. I could scarce breathe.
“What gold could be dug from Dashon Ra has been long carted away,” said Elene, standing at my shoulder. “But he says the veins yet thread the earth like a web and extend throughout Evanore. He says they are like ring mail that strengthens our land, holding a power that fires magic. Come on.”
She marched down the sloping side of the abandoned mine, hopped across a deep, narrow trench, and skirted the corner of a rubble wall—all that remained of a shed. The haze thickened, coiling violet tendrils about Elene’s boots. I followed, wishing I had never asked her to show me this. Making Deunor’s sign upon my brow and drawing Iero’s holy seal upon my breast, I prayed that Saverian’s spell would not fail me. This land held terrible secrets.
Down and down. Our boots slipped and slid on the loose tailings and patches of ice. Nearing the bottom of the slope, we ducked under an ancient leat, solid and unbroken, though only grit and gravel remained where water had once flowed. Beyond us lay the lowermost levels of the mine, a rectangular pit of iron-laced rock the size of Renna’s Great Hall, cracked and scarred by weather and men’s work. Piles of rubble littered its floor. And across every handsbreadth of the rock walls, every protrusion, knob, or broken shelf held a vessel of carved stone, votive vessels as you would find in Deunor’s temple or Iero’s cathedral—hundreds of them, some the size of bread loaves or tabors, some smaller, palm-sized like oil lamps, like the calyx I had seen in Osriel’s bloody hands in the abbey kitchen.
The bruised haze hung above the vessels as does the stench above a midden. Dread rose in my soul like fever. “This is where he brings them…the eyes of the dead.”
“He seals each vessel with his own blood. When he brings it here, he unseals it and empties it into the earth. That dark blotch at the center is a bottomless shaft. Though the vessels are no longer needed, he names them sacred because of what they carried, so he leaves them here.”
“Not sacred,” I said, revulsion clogging my throat. “This is no holy place. No temple. It is a prison.” As my gaze roamed the desolation, I clamped my hands under my arms as if some accident might make them touch this violated earth. I didn’t want to hear those trapped here. I didn’t want to feel their fury and confusion and hatred more clearly than I did already. Madness had owned me for too many days.
Elene scooped up a handful of crushed stone and dirt, then allowed it to rain through her fingers onto the dry earth. “He plans to work some terrible magic here. When he brought me here three years ago to show me—to end what we had begun in happier times—he said he hoped with all his being that he would never have to set his plan in motion, for it would be such a sin as would end his last hope of heaven. Truly, Brother Valen, it is not for his own glory, but for Navronne he strives, yet he does not listen that hope cannot be bought with sin.”
The bilious light sapped all color from her warm skin. The tears rolled down her cheeks like gray pearls, and her palms pressed flat across her belly as if to shield the child that grew inside her. “I put my hope in Luviar and his noble lighthouse to show him the way of right. For one blessed hour on that same night you escaped from Gillarine, I thought his loneliness had led him back to love. And though that hope proved false, I believed my dearest prayers answered when he told us of the Harrower hiding place you’d found, and that his brothers had agreed to join him to oppose Sila Diaglou. But a tenday ago, while you lay ill, reports came that Sila Diaglou had abandoned her hidden fortress and, at the same time, raised her own banner in Palinur alongside his brother’s. A light went out of him that day. Within hours he left Renna with only Voushanti accompanying him. And since he’s come back, he has not spoken to me, not looked at me, not told anyone where he went. I’ve begged him, yelled at him, pleaded with him to explain to the cabal what he plans next, but he refuses.”
She waved her hand at the bleak scene before us. “Three years ago, he told me that his own power might not be enough to accomplish what he wants, and that the more certain way would be to ask the Danae’s help to join their magic to his. And now you are to take him to the Danae. Whatever this is…he’s decided to go through with it. By the Holy Mother, Valen, you’re a sorcerer and his friend—the only one not blinded by fealty or awe or fear. Only you can stop him…save him.”
I wanted to laugh at the idea of me stopping Osriel the Bastard, the rightful King of Navronne, the sorcerer who called up red lightning and performed rites that reeked of brimstone, from doing anything he chose. But Elene’s grief and fear for the prince tempered my answer with sobriety, at least. “Lady, I cannot even begin to imagine what spells might be worked with…whatever lies in this place. And indeed the prince has good reasons to go to the Danae, the same he has stated all along. We must know what they can tell us of the world’s sickness and its remedy. If he gives them warning of Sila Diaglou and Gildas, perhaps they will shelter our Scholar and give light to his lighthouse. It is his right and his duty to speak to them for us. But I promise you I’ll do what I can to discover his plans and persuade him to some alternative.”
I had no faith in my promise. Nor did she, though she thanked me and pretended it so. I took her in my arms as she wept, wishing naught but to offer comfort. For indeed the least significant, yet most painful discovery on this night of dread revelation was that I would willingly suffer any danger to serve Elene, though her heart was not—and had never been—mine to win. No wonder at her agonies if that ebullient heart—and the child she had conceived—belonged to the Duc of Evanore. And no matter the course of past or future, a love already tested by the trials of grim necessity, of denial and sacrifice, of illness, war, and unholy sorcery, was unlikely to be swayed by the fingers of a feckless vagabond, whatever the marvels of his birth.
Chapter 11
Down, down, interminably down. The steep descent from Renna to the borderlands of Evanore in the driving blizzard was unrelenting misery. Hold your seat. Keep your back straight. Legs forward. Trust the beast. The distance was not so far, so I was told. Two days, three in such weather. But my backside was already hot and raw, and every other part of me was frozen, save two fiery strips on my fingers where the leather cinch straps, made into knife edges by the cold, had sliced my flesh. My back and shoulders ached…as did my spirit, weighed to breaking with the memory of those thousand empty vessels.
I had spent the dreary hours speculating on how I could possibly accomplish what I had promised Elene. To set myself as intermediary between Osriel and Stearc’s daughter was only slightly less witless than setting myself between my friend Gram and his dangerous royal self. What in the name of heaven did he think to do with Danae magic and thousands of imprisoned souls? And how could I possibly stop it? Elene had sorely misjudged my capabilities.
Stearc rode point, the dark expanse of his shoulders our guide staff through the world of white. Five of his own warriors rode alongside him. They were to escort him back to Gillarine and relieve the troop he’d left there, while Osriel and I hunted the Danae.
The prince and I followed close behind the thane. In the presence of Stearc’s men, Osriel rode as Gram. He had insisted I wear my pureblood garb and return to pureblood disciplines, playing Prince Osriel’s contracted servant sent upon a private mission. The mask and cloak felt odd, as
if they belonged to someone else.
Voushanti guarded our rear, along with his trusted warriors Philo and Melkire. Just ahead of them rode Saverian, brought along to tend Osriel’s health. She had been furious at the prince’s insistence that she accompany us and had taken her vengeance by calling hourly halts and forcing him to drink her potions. Saverian reminded me of thyme or savory—useful in small amounts, but like to gag you in too great a quantity.
I’d no more questions about how to rattle her temper. On the previous night, when I had come round the end of Renna’s Great Hall from the rock gate stair after bidding farewell to Elene, Saverian had pounced like a starved wolverine.
“Are you entirely without intelligence?” Clearly the question was not meant to be answered. She grabbed my cloak and dragged me past the doorway that returned to the hall, where Osriel’s warlords were cheering. “Do you think me blind or just some thick-witted troll? What a striking coincidence that you dropped my things—which I had damned well better get back, by the bye—at exactly the same time the heiress of Erasku slipped out of the hall. I’m truly surprised not to find you naked again! Ah, yes, I forget: a Dané dances naked and reportedly can seduce a brick wall does he but sigh. So it is but your inborn nature to put the moon-mad little warrior at risk of a flaying from her father, and surely the annoying physician can fend for herself when the guards alert Prince Osriel because the woman’s servant has gone missing at a warmoot!” Astonishing how she could raise such a lather in a voice that none could have heard five steps away from us.
We had returned straight on to Renna Syne. The walk seemed to cool her temper slightly, but upon our arrival, she made clear that I had exhausted what meager stock of forbearance she had vouched me as her patient. “I don’t wish to be friends with you. I don’t care to join monkish conspiracies to change the world. All I ask is civilized behavior—which means, among other things, that you do not put me at risk of losing my employment or my life.”
When she had me sit on the bed and proceeded to drop a thin chain about my neck, I’d feared she’d decided to strangle me. But the fat little coin that dangled from the chain and weighed so heavily on my chest was, in fact, the gold medallion she used to tame my disease.
“When you feel your senses compromised, hold the medallion in the center of your forehead, infuse it with power until the world quiets, and do not beg me for any favors when it’s no longer sufficient to the task.”
With the remedy for my disease in my possession, I’d felt well rid of Saverian’s attentions and gleefully anticipated setting out on my own business once my obligations to Osriel and Elene were concluded. But a night awash in sweat, plagued with doulon dreams and fits of the shakes, had stolen all the pleasure from my prospective independence. Eventually, I had squeezed enough use from the woman’s medallion to soothe my night’s ills, but I had sorely missed her hands.
Fingering the gold disk, I glanced over my shoulder. The prince was unrecognizable in thick layers of wool. Somehow I’d thought it might be easier to draw him into conversation with him traveling as Gram, but my every attempt had fallen to naught. In truth he had not spoken to anyone since we’d ridden out of Renna’s gates at dawn, leaving Elene behind to tend Brother Victor in Saverian’s absence. His visage reflected more of the hammered gold wolf with garnet eyes above my bedchamber door than my friend Gram.
Stearc’s back vanished around a steep bank. The billowing curtains of snow had thinned, so that as we followed the thane around the prominence, the rugged borderlands opened to every side. Rival claims, blood feuds, and banditry had ever festered in this harsh land. A few Ardran manses, where villeins worked their lords’ wheat fields, lay nose to jowl with Evanori fortresses and freeholds, where crofters kept flocks of rangy goats or coaxed rye and oats from the thin soil under the protection of their warlords.
A little past midday, the air grew thick with black smoke. Voushanti dispatched Philo to scout the road ahead and drew the little troop close around us. Swords were loosed in their scabbards. A flurry of powdery snow announced the warrior’s return.
“Raiders burnt out Edane Godsear’s villeins at sunrise this morning,” said the ginger-bearded warrior. “Harrowers, not bandits. The village is ash. The women say their men were called to the manse, as it’s burning as well, and they’ve seen smoke rising from both north and west.”
“Is the manse still under attack?” asked Voushanti, who had come up to the front beside Stearc.
“No, lord,” said Philo.
Voushanti and Saverian were of a mind to turn back. Had I not been accustomed to the monks’ signing speech, I might have missed Osriel’s gesture; as he adjusted his grip on his reins, one gloved finger broke out from his curled hand to point decisively forward.
“We’ve business west,” said Stearc. “No rabble with torches and bill-hooks will hinder us.”
We rode on. The Ardran village had comprised no more than eight or ten dwellings, huddled near the crossing of road and a stream. Naught but a clay baker’s oven was left standing. Women stood paralyzed beside the smoldering ruins, children clutching their skirts. Plumes of smoke and billowing snow could not hide their smudged cheeks or the dull eyes that stared hopelessly as we rode past.
“Lord Stearc,” said the prince softly, urging his mount up beside the thane. “We cannot just pass them by.”
“We can do nothing for them, Gram. Godsear will see to their welfare. It’s too dangerous to linger where raiders can hide so easily.”
“They’re stronger than we are and accustomed to hardship,” said Saverian. “If they’ve no help for themselves, an hour’s attention from us is not going to change their fate.”
The prince bowed his head in deference. “You heard Philo’s report, mistress. The manse itself is burned. We must stop.”
And so, of course, we did. Osriel was the first off his horse. He engaged himself with one person, then the next, prodding each to move and think. “Goodwife, have you a place to shelter? Family? You must get out of this weather. Gammy, have you a root cellar here? Or root crops under the snow? Boy, use that fence pole to shove the embers together to make a fire. Then get your sister and bring the unburned beams to build a windbreak. Help your mam stay warm through the night. Have you menfolk?”
Most of the women were lone—their husbands already dead or gone with their lord to fight for the feckless Perryn, which they believed the same as dead. And rightly so. The men called to the manse to help fight the fire had been graybeards or cripples or boys under fifteen.
Saverian dressed burns and tended injuries, moving briskly from one to the next. Our warriors offered packets of bread or cheese, sympathetic ears, and strong arms to build shelters. The people gawked at me, wondering, as if I might perform some magic to rebuild their lives. But of course, they didn’t know I was the most useless of sorcerers. I managed only to uncover their well with a minor voiding spell, but I had no confidence they could survive the frigid night.
“The new year will bring a new king,” Gram told one trembling goodwife. “Survive until then. Greet him with your needs and sorrows. Those who have done this deed are not messengers of great powers, but vile ravagers, and your king will call them to account for this crime. Gods do not begrudge you a roof.”
After an hour, we rode on. Though our escort remained alert, we encountered no Harrowers, only the path of destruction they had crafted. Every manse, croft, village, and sheep shed we passed by lay in ruins, some already cold ashes, some still blazing. We stopped wherever we found people, whether Evanori or Ardran, whether villeins, noblewomen bundled in charred furs, frightened boys, or grizzled crofters with burnt hands. Some mumbled fearfully of the blind immortal Gehoum, afraid even to help themselves. But more picked themselves up and set about their own survival once they heard that a new king would bring them aid with the new year.
As we rode past a ragged Evanori procession on their way from their charred hillside to a warlord’s hold, I moved to Osriel’s sid
e. “Why, lord?” I said softly so that the soldiers could not hear. “Why do you not reveal yourself to these people? Not that you are Eodward’s heir…I understand that. But how much more would their spirits lift if they knew the one sharing his bread and blankets to be their own duc? And how eagerly would they rally to his cause when he did step forward to claim his father’s throne?”
“Fear has ever been the Bastard’s staunchest ally,” he said, hunching his shoulders against the bitter wind. “Hope must stand aside and do its work softly until the day is won.” He kicked his mount ahead of mine and said no more.
Seeing the steadied shoulders, the firmer grasps, the clearer eyes that Gram’s care effected, I could not but remember Luviar’s talk of the mystical bond between Navronne and its sovereign. The lack of a righteous king speeds the ruin of the land. And so, perhaps, was the reverse true; the ascension of a righteous sovereign might have consequences deeper than law or politics. I wanted Osriel to be that king. I believed he could be. But the poisoned fury of the dead that infused this land and hung like battlefield smoke inside my skull made me fear that he was not.
For three days we pushed hard, fearing that a new storm might leave the roads impassable. Late on the third day we descended a steep pass between two spiny ridges only to see a grand prospect opened before us, washed in the indigo light of snowy evening. From west to east the dark, jagged gorge of the River Kay sliced the frosted landscape of treeless terraces. Just below us the river plunged down a great falls and veered northward through broken foothills, where, freed from the confining rock, its character altered into the lazy sweeping flow that fed the fertile valley where Gillarine lay.
Bridging the gorge a quellé west of the falls was Caedmon’s arch, its broken entry pillars on the Ardran side resembling thick ice spears. And just north of the pillars lay the crossroads where I had first glimpsed a Dané and a tree that did not grow in the human plane. My stomach tightened.