by Carol Berg
Saverian slowed. “Valen, look.”
“Best keep up. He’s using no track I can travel on my own.” I tightened my grip on her wrist. What with the rain, tired legs, a head packed with fears and nonsense, and Kol’s disconcerting route finding, the shifting of north and south, of before and after and here and there, was twisting my instincts underside up and forepart behind. Our every step moved across time and distance in ways not even a Cartamandua could fathom.
But the willful physician snatched her hand away. “Stop! Look at yourself, Valen.”
“We daren’t lose—” Iero’s grace! I stopped. Threads of pale lapis-hued light snaked about my fingers and bare legs. I shoved one sodden sleeve higher. The light—some threads fine, some thick—shifted and blurred beneath the raindrops. The knot in my breast burst. A cold shaft of terror pierced me head to feet. I had become…other.
“What’s happening? Is it uncomfortable? Pleasurable?” She made her odd little open-palm gesture asking permission, but touched my arm before I could refuse it. The traces sparked silver and blue under her fingertips.
“I’m—No. It just itches. Stings.” As if a swarm of ants had taken up residence on…or inside…my flesh and took it in mind to bite me every once in a while.
“Do you feel it atop the skin or deeper? Perhaps it’s like a lizard’s coloring that changes with its surroundings.” She bent my arm at wrist and elbow, which caused the marks to squirm and blur. “Look at that! If I just had my lenses…better light…”
Queasy and embarrassed, I jerked my arm away. The shifting marks seem to be connected straight to my gut. “We’d best go. He’s waiting for us.”
I stumbled forward, clutching my bundle of clothes and boots, unable to keep my eyes from the unstable patterns on my bare legs and feet. Saverian grabbed my sleeve and guided me around trees and stumps.
A flare of white welcomed us into a rain-swept circle of trampled grass amid the trees. A starlike cluster of twigs, the source of the pale, magical light, dangled from an overhanging branch, unaffected by the rain. The light revealed several ramshackle sheds and lean-tos nestled beside a thatch-roofed hut. Kol stood at the open doorway of the hut, engaged in conversation with a man in a dirty white gown and a brown—I wiped the rain from my eyes. Not a brown cloak, but a cowl, and a well-delineated tonsure that bared half his scalp. I was speechless.
“…Well, of course, I’ve been gi’en to welcome the stranger, and to hear a voice of home would put me out of mind in heavenly thanks, though I’ve renounced all such. But a woman born…Brave Kol, could ye not ask me please to slash my throat or draw down the poison of the hemlock, but ye must put me in the way of my sin? Half a century’s turn must I have fasted and prayed by now—not to say, great God of all, that I’ve complaints or believe by any chance that I’ve full expiated my guilt, for certain not”—he raised a bony hand to address this side comment to the heavens—“but to come to this moment to find myself in the full occasion of repeating my defilement—more likely, e’en, being half mad as I am—’tis a sore deterrent to hospitality!”
The white light bathed his face as he stuck his head around Kol’s rangy form and squinted into the rainy night. “Did ye not say ye’d brought two human folk? Or is it—?” As his examination took in my odd and soggy self, half dressed, legs flaring blue like miniature lightning, his own ruddy complexion lost all color, and he circled his breast with Iero’s seal, completing the gesture by clutching his chest as if his heart might fly out of it. “Mighty saints protect me, Brother Kol, ye’ve brought me a halfbreed.”
Assuredly his claim of fasting was no lie; the monk had scarce a citré’s weight of spare flesh on him. But he had once been a robust man, perhaps a half head less than Kol or I, and his meatless bones were broad and thick. Gray-stubbled chin and tonsure appeared as ragged as his garb, and assuredly no cleaner. But despite his self-deprecation, his voice boomed clear and the pale eyes gleamed as sharp as a well-honed dagger.
“Is the woman also mixed blood?”
“Only the male,” said Kol. “He is newly a wanderkin and cannot warm himself as yet. His companion has fallen afoul of Tuari, and the wanderkin would not leave her to the archon’s retribution. She needs shelter.”
“Ye’ve saved him from the breaking, have ye not, Kol? Put yourself in the way of burying, and if this girl aided ye in such an enterprise, then right and mercy it be to protect her. But how came ye to involve yourself with any human offspring, who’ve sworn never—?” The wide-eyed monk inhaled sharply. He stepped around Kol, and unheeding of the rain soaking his cowl and gown, grasped my arm and dragged me underneath the twiggy lamp. His fingers a manacle about my wrist, he swept my face as he might study his holy writs. “Merciful Iero, Liege of Heaven!”
“He is born of my sister,” said Kol.
“The cartographer relinquished him at last?” The monk’s fingers pinched my chin with the bite of a hungry dog on bloody meat and twisted my head side to side. “All count of human years has escaped me, but this one cannot have much time left before his maturing. Ne’er did I imagine your cruel penalty would budge the Cartamandua mule.”
Kol stiffened. “Humans are not fit to judge cruelty.”
“Strip off yer righteous skin, Brother Kol, and we’ll argue it again,” said the monk cheerfully, spinning about to face the Dané so quickly that his garb snapped my bare legs, causing a shower of blue and silver sparks. He tapped his own broad chest. “Would ye wrestle me to answer which of us has the One God’s ear? I’m not what I was, but if blessed Iero doth keep this heart thuttering, a human sinner will yet crack your long-lived spine. Fasting and hard labor strengthens—”
“Janus did not send me,” I interrupted, too curious to endure their jousting. “What, in Iero’s glory, brings a Karish monk to Aeginea? You’re not from Gillarine.” The threadbare brown cowl and white gown were not the black garb of Saint Ophir’s brotherhood. A century’s turn, he’d said. Names and faces, plots and schemes flew through my overcrowded head—the abbey, the lighthouse, the succession, Luviar, Osriel, Janus, Kol, Eodward…“By heaven, are you Picus?”
Then I, too, drew Iero’s sunburst upon my breast, for to see a man two centuries old and not dead drew truths of dread mystery and mortality all too near. Caedmon had sent a monk to the Danae with his infant son, a man charged to educate young Eodward as befit a human prince. But the fellow had vanished mysteriously some few years after Eodward’s return to Navronne, and only rumors had ever said where he’d gone.
“Picus?” Saverian tilted her head to one side, looking him over. “Osriel has a set of journals written by a man of that name. He was King Eodward’s—Mother save us!” Even the cool physician could not contain her astonishment.
The monk’s pinched face blossomed into such a joyful alignment as coaxed my own spirit to a smile. “I’m not forgot, then?” He quickly raised his hands as if to stay a legion. “Nay, nay, don’t tell me. Be it honorable memory or ill repute, I must not care. Penance is a narrow road. But here we bide in the deluge, and this lady’s lips blue as a wanderkin herself! And the lad doth appear as he were a goat who’s been witched into fasting. Prithee, come inside my cell and take what meager comforts I’ve to offer. Yes, the both of you. Should my weak character keep a drenched and freezing woman in the rain, ’twould be another sin to my account.” Picus pulled back the hide curtain that served him as a door and waved us in.
“My gratitude, Brother,” said Saverian as she hurried inside.
When I moved to follow the monk, Kol stayed me with a gesture. “Warm thyself, Cartamandua-son. I’ll await thee, that we might advance thy teaching as the night settles in. If I can convince my sire of the need, I can gift thee the walking gard at next dawning, and so shall we be quit of each other the sooner.”
“Tonight? Certainly…but…” I hadn’t expected to go out again. Yet it was really just morning down by the sea. The rain pounded Picus’s thatched roof, the tumbledown sheds to either side of it, and th
e thick mat of leaves beneath the bedraggled maples and copper beeches. “Won’t you come indoors with us, vayar? I’ve so many questions. We could talk where it’s dry.”
Kol reached for a sturdy branch above his head, and in one smooth motion lifted his shoulders above the branch until he supported his whole weight on his stretched arms and hands. A graceful swing of his legs, a twisting motion, and he sat on the branch, knees drawn up in his encircling arms, perched as easily as a cat. “Thou’lt not be long inside.”
Whether this was a statement or a command, I wasn’t sure. Kol’s manner was a bit wearing. If my mother was beloved of all, then surely her brother must have something to recommend him. I just hadn’t seen it…save, of course, the grace to protect my physical well-being against Danae spite. From the sheltering doorway I watched him turn his face up, allowing the cold rain to bathe his face and stream his long red hair down his back.
“He is beautiful, is he not?” Picus stood at my shoulder, the ripe aroma of unwashed flesh and a diet heavy with wild onions souring the autumn pungency of old leaves and wet pine bark. “No Ardran rose was ever so lovely, no Morian stag ever so regal, no Evanori boar ever so stubborn as Kol Stian-son. Had he a soul, the Creator would not know whether to name him Archangel or condemn him to eternal fire for daring rival Him.”
“Kol is certainly hard, but even I would not call him soulless.” Not one who danced as he did, who grieved as he did.
Picus held open the flap of leather behind me. “Nay, nay. It is not a matter of naming. Have you ne’er been taught the holy writs, lad? The Creator gave the spark of life only to human creatures. Danae have souls no more than red deer or ash trees or the wind.”
“Then what of those like me? Am I half souled, part tree, part man, destined for half heaven or half hell?” I tossed this out in jest, thinking he but carried on his sparring with Kol. But his prattle stilled long enough to disturb me. I turned and found his pale eyes picking at my face as if to search the darkest nooks and crannies behind my heart and ribs.
“I know not,” he said softly. “There was a time when I believed the One God could not be so cruel as to beget a soulless creature upon a human parent. But then I saw evidence…” He switched his gaze back to the Dané in the tree. “Perhaps it is one by one He chooses.”
I swallowed hard and hid my mottled hands in my soggy bundle of clothes. No soul…that was not possible. I shifted my shoulders as if to prove I had will and sense of my own, and I remembered Gillarine Abbey church and how I had felt uplifted there, and reverent—surely the sign of gods speaking to a person, one capable of repentance and service, one possessing life beyond the body’s limits. But then, I had also felt uplifted when I saw Kol dance, when I had looked on Elene silhouetted in sunlight, and when I’d sat in Gillarine’s refectory eating stewed parsnips. How would one ever know if one lacked a soul? Even Danae had thoughts and will, emotions and, at least in Kol’s case, some sense of honor—not the marks of soulless beasts.
“Was Kol so fierce before his sister—my mother—was imprisoned?” Cowardly, I asked no more of souls.
“Kol hath ever a sober cast of mind,” said the monk, palpably relieved at my shift of subject. “More than most Danae, and of a certain, more than Clyste—not that she lacked intelligence to accompany her cheery nature. He ever seeks perfection in his being—a hard road for any of God’s creatures. But Clyste made him laugh and softened his eye, and my dear lad challenged him to find delight in brotherly friendship as well as duty. Twixt them both, held so dear by their love, Kol reflected Iero’s light upon us all. But I fear his joy has died with them.”
My dear lad…It took me a moment to realize the monk spoke of Eodward.
“Come inside, lad, and relieve thy chill.” The monk’s hand gripped my shoulder kindly, even if his offer was wholly nonsensical. Naught could relieve the chill he had just laid on me. For a being without a soul, death became the end of all.
Moist heat slapped my face as I ducked and stepped into Picus’s round hut—scarce eight paces across. Saverian knelt by a small fire pit in the center of the dark room, stretching her cloak to help the thick layers to dry. I needed no polite encouragement to sit on the hard-packed dirt beside her. Not only could I not stand upright without cracking my head on the low slanting ribs of the roof or poking my eye on wayward thatch, but I could scarce see or breathe at that height. If the monk had a hole in the roof to draw out his smoke, it was wholly inadequate to the task.
Picus let the door flap fall behind us. Quicker than blinking he had coaxed his fire brighter, set a clay pot of water over it, and snapped sprigs from a dry bundle dangling from his roof alongside a skinned rabbit, several woven nets bulging with pale, dusty vegetables, a variety of tools with leather-wrapped handles, and a pair of snowshoes. He settled cross-legged across the fire from me and Saverian and crushed the leaves into a clay mug and bowl. “We’ll have a bracing tea anon. ’Tis such pleasure to have company, I scarce know up from down—not seen a human person in much longer than you’d want to account. I’m flummoxed that I can recall how to speak, so you must command me stopper my mouth when thy ears protest. Kol comes to check on me now and again. Tends my garden or brings me a fish or a bag of apples, and in return I deluge him with human words, poor fellow, the last thing he cares to hear. Which recalls…”
He sprang to his feet and poked his head through the door flap. “Kol, as thou’rt waiting…my turnips suffer black mold, and the onions pull up soft and slimed, scarce a layer fit to eat. I fret this rain will finish them. The spelt in the far mead has no ripe heads, and frost nips the dawn. I know it’s been scarce a month since you’ve tended it, but if thou wouldst have mercy upon my poor plot, I’d be most grateful.”
I tried to hear Kol’s response, but I could not distinguish it from the sounds of snapping fire and rain rustling on the thatch, and the thousand other noises of storm-racked forest and distant sea vying for attention in my head. Overwhelmed with mystery, I could not even imagine what Picus required. I doubted Kol would set to work with rake and hoe. Another question to add to my growing tally.
I held my hands near the fire, but instantly withdrew them before my skin blackened like scorched paper. The shifting blue marks had faded to silver. I wrapped my arms around my unsettled middle and hoped the steam rising from my sodden shirt would suffice to calm my shivering.
Picus closed the flap again and lowered himself to the dirt floor, scratching his grizzled chin. “’Tis a wonder Kol comes here. The land grows ill. Will not stay healthy no matter that he puts it right. And my company is no pleasure to him. Though, indeed, he’s exiled himself from their company, save when he is summoned to the dance. Even his sire is near a stranger to him since Clyste’s fall.”
I believed I knew why. “None but you and he know that Janus fathered Clyste’s child.”
Picus nodded. “After Clyste’s prisoning, I saw that Kol bore some weighty burden and seemed like to shatter with it. So I baited him into a fight—not so difficult to do, as you see—and goaded forth his secret. Took me a good trimonth to walk without those bruises squalling, and I’ve ne’er regrown the teeth.”
He kneaded his unshaven left jaw for a moment, his attention suddenly far away. But then he scooted around and rummaged in the dark behind him, pulling out two irregularly woven blankets that might once have had some color. He gave one to each of us. “Come, thou’rt a soggy pair. Bundle up and get warm, mistress. I’ll leave thee lone here in the house and take me to the shed when sleep time comes so ye can do what women must. And I’ll not even think on it, I promise, or if I do, I’ll perform my most rigorous spiritual exercises or even hike me down to the sea and douse my head, though I could wish for better weather or at the least Kol to take me down a shorter path. The determination to penance can take a man only so far until it falls into the sin called ‘pride of mortification,’ if thou’rt familiar with Karish vice and virtue.”
“Good monk, you’ve no need to give up your bed,�
� said Saverian. “I’m a daughter of Evanore and our customs see no wrong in stalwart women sheltering with honorable men.” She was being exceptionally polite. She didn’t correct his use of mistress.
Shaking his head sadly, Picus poured the simmering water over his herbs and handed the mug to Saverian and the bowl to me. “Ah, mistress, hope of heaven and true repentance bids me warn ye that I am no honorable man, but abjectly fallen. Though vowed chaste at fifteen, and gi’en naught to suffer in this life but a surfeit of adventure and the joy to serve the fairest prince the One God ever sent to humankind, I succumbed to the Adversary’s assault and broke my vows and the most solemn responsibilities of a teacher to lie with a woman. None should trust me.”
A long pull on the steaming tea seemed to restore the physician’s ironical humor. She tilted her head and examined the monk, as he opened a flat wood chest he’d dragged from the same dark corner where he’d found the blanket. “So you what…consummated an attraction…kept a female companion…in two-hundred-some years…a healthy man who lives among beings who go about unclothed? I’ve little understanding of Karish ways, despite my association with Brother Valen here, but I hardly see the difficulty. If you are indeed this Picus…a man of such advanced years…I would think the continuation of a young man’s animal urgencies would be more reassuring than problematical—mayhap a sign of your god’s favor.” She sounded little short of laughter, which I feared must surely wound a monk so determined to penance, no matter how foolish we judged his rigor.
“The structure of virtue was the last lesson of my novitiate, Saverian,” I said, “though I scarce got beyond naming the seven great virtues and the twelve great vices. But pride of mortification made sense to me—the vice of those who aggrandize themselves by the extremity of their penance rites or humility. Clearly Brother Picus heeds the first duty of the sinner—to sincerely balance his reparations with his clearest assessment of the severity of his sin. We must honor his judgment, while welcoming his willingness to allow us to intrude upon his solitude.”