by Carol Berg
“Have I shamed thee, Stian sagai?” Kol’s words cracked and snapped as does a frozen lake.
The white-haired Dané clasped his hands behind his neck and pressed his arms inward, as if to squeeze out the thoughts Kol had implanted in his head. Only after long silence did he release his grip. Tenderly he drew his fingers along Kol’s hard cheek and tucked stray red curls behind the younger man’s ear. “Nay, jongai, never shame,” he said softly. “It is only…for good or ill, the archon’s word speaks our Law. My human son has met his mortal fate. My daughter ne’er will dance with me again. I would not lose thee, too.”
“Then do not allow Tuari’s blind hatred to speak for thee. This halfbreed is born of Clyste. Her choice. Grant him the walking gard to keep him safe.”
Stian dropped his hand heavily, leaving three small flowers twined in Kol’s hair. “Bring him.”
The true lands are dying. So simple a phrase to leave my heart hollow. Did no one know the reasons? Were even the Danae, who could reshape the earth and command its creatures, confounded by it? What did that do to Osriel’s hope? Navronne’s hope?
Kol tramped and skidded down the slope toward me. Wary of this elder who spoke so casually of breaking halfbreeds, I chose not to let them know I’d overheard. I sprang to my feet and shouted louder than before, “I’ve heard the stones’ voices, vayar. This one is most unhappy.”
“Thou hast heard—” Kol stopped halfway down the slope and shook his head as if to clear it. “Come up, rejongai. We will talk of stones’ voices later. Stian summons thee.”
When I reached Kol’s side, and we climbed slowly toward the waiting elder Dané, he spoke softly. “Thou hast shown reasonable manners thus far, Valen, and I would caution thee to continue. My sire hath only tonight learned of thy parentage…”
“…and he is no happier than I was.”
For the first time I glimpsed amusement twitch Kol’s fine mouth. “Thou hast no measure of his unhappiness, wanderkin. And Stian’s skills make my own appear but a nestling’s tricks.”
I doubted that, having heard how Stian spoke of his son’s talents, having witnessed those talents summon the earth itself to his service.
“And mention not thy female companion or the monk.”
No, Stian would likely have no kind feelings for Eodward’s tutor or a human stranger, however unlikely that Saverian and Kol would repeat my parents’ folly. Indeed, the consideration of a mating between Stian’s son and the physician conjured a delightful image—something like the conjoining of a swan and a woodpecker. A virginal woodpecker.
I smothered a grin. “Aye, relagai. No mention of distracting humans.”
The elder Dané awaited us where the rolling meadow formed a shallow bowl, choked with dead willows and matted vegetation. His fingers stroked the blades of brittle grass that had once stood as tall as my hip.
“Stian sagai”—Kol bowed gracefully before his father—“I present a wanderkin of our blood-clan. I have accepted the charge of his dam to stand as his vayar. He hath pledged himself to explore and learn, and I judge that his talents and experience have given him knowledge sufficient to accept his walking gard. He answers to the name Valen.”
Stian rose. A snarling cat graced the brow and cheek of the broad-shouldered Dané, its long tail twined about his neck. The gards that marked his flat belly, broad chest, and muscled limbs spoke of jungles and hot, languid pools. Despite his white hair, he appeared no older than Prior Nemesio. A man in his prime, with spring-green eyes that scoured me.
“Scrawny. Thick-boned. Weak.” I might have been a cow. An ugly cow.
Kol answered coolly. “Valen followed me from the Sentinel Oak to Evaldamon without rest, sagai. Even so, his strength or endurance is no matter. I seek thy consent only for the walking gard, that Clyste’s child may have skills to elude those who would break him…to our shame. His use of those skills shall be his own burden, not thine or mine. He is not to dance.”
Stian’s lean face resembled Kol’s. The father’s chin sat squarer. The son’s eyes sat deeper. Stian reminded me of the first stone whose voice I’d heard. Unyielding heaviness. Stalwart density.
The elder’s arched nose flared in contempt, and the creases about his eyes deepened. “The Cartamandua bragged that he sowed his seed across the lands and seasons and taunted his kin with his scattered offspring. That such a preening rooster laid hand to Clyste…that she chose prisoning to protect him…Pah!”
“When I was a boy, Janus named the Danae glorious, generous, and hospitable,” I snapped, anger banishing caution. “I refused to believe him, madman that he was, preferring the common wisdom that the long-lived are spiteful, petty, and cruel. A child’s insights can be astonishing, can they not? For even then, I did not know that a Dané had stolen Janus’s wits over a broken promise. Nor had I been ensnared by Danae trickery designed to murder other humans. Nor had I yet experienced the Danae welcome for their imperfect kinsmen. Is your hammer ready?”
“Rejongai!” Kol barked.
I pivoted to face my uncle squarely and bowed. “Teach me, if I have erred, vayar. I assumed that frank speech must be expected between elders and wanderkins. Or perhaps it is believed that halfbreeds do not hear when their lacks and parentage are so unkindly discussed, which, of course, must make it proper to cripple such a flawed being.”
Stian’s complexion darkened. He stepped forward, his fingers splayed in some fashion that caused sweat to bead on my brow and back.
I did not retreat.
“Stian sagai!” Taut as a maid on her virgin night, Kol stepped between us. “I am his vayar. Thou canst not touch him without first touching me.”
“Give him passage, Kol,” said Stian, snarling and pointing to the fractured rock. “I consent. But do it here. Without sparing. Then keep him forever from my sight.”
Chapter 16
While Stian reclined on the fallen slab, glowering at us, Kol led me up the jagged southern face of the rock. Once we had left the ground behind, Kol’s muttering never ceased. “Thou hast the thoughtfulness of a badger, Valen. Did I not warn thee of his temper? Did I fail to mention that this is the same Stian who must be consulted as the archon prepares to break thy knees? For a passing satisfaction, thou hast forfeited every benefit of his tolerance.”
“What hope has any halfbreed of his tolerance?” I called up to my uncle, whose feet dislodged sharp slips of rock that peppered my face. My blood yet ran hot, as well, though it was cooling rapidly as the distance between my feet and the hard ground increased. Why did words bother me so?
The uneven steps, created by long-ago fracturing and smoothed by centuries of wind and rain, grew narrower and impossibly farther apart as we neared the top. I squeezed my fingers into a crevice, even as a fierce wind threatened to rip them out again. Praising Kemen Sky Lord for his moonlight, I gripped with toes curled as if they might hold me to the rock.
“Stian bears no inborn hatred for humankind,” snapped Kol. “He nurtured Caedmon’s son against all custom. Never did he fail in love for Eodward, even when my mortal brother broke his promise to return—a betrayal that cost my sire the archon’s wreath and brought to power those who despise all humans and their works. Never did he fail in love for Clyste, though she tore his heart by refusing to explain who had fathered her child and who had taken the babe away, though it meant he watched her unmade and bound to earth.”
With a last smooth effort Kol stood atop the rock looking down. Wind gusts snatched his hair from out its knot and threatened to tear me from the wall. Every scrap of my will was required to loose my fingerhold and follow him.
“Nor did Stian fail in love for me when he saw I knew Clyste’s secret and would not yield it. When my sire takes his season in this mountain, he feels the dying of the earth and believes some failing of his has left us helpless to change what comes. Thou knowest not of tolerance.”
Of a sudden, my personal grievance seemed petty. Kol’s passionate avowal touched the very heart of my purpose. Out of breath, h
eart galloping from the climb, I crawled over the rim of the rock. “Kol…relagai…why is the earth dying? In the human realms, matters are far worse than here. Our weather, our crops and herds—”
“Such matters weigh too grievously to be spoken of in passing, and we must begin the rite. I had planned more teaching, but Stian could withdraw his consent as sudden as he granted it. Get thee to the center spire.”
The flattish summit of the rock encompassed only a few quercae around, and most of it comprised the jagged edges of great fractures, impossible to balance on. Even the more solid center was laced with cracks. Deep inside the rock, the rain froze and melted and froze, threatening to splinter it yet again—to its grief, as I had learned not an hour since. But as a spear thrust into a body’s heart, a slender spike of harder stone protruded above the surface to the height of my shoulder.
Kol, of course, reached the spike in two easy leaps. Filled with misgivings about rites that took place atop such perilous perches, I stepped after him, only to wish fervently that I had remained on hands and knees. Every step across the gaping blackness of a crevice sent my stomach plummeting, no matter that most were narrower than my foot. Time and distance reshaped themselves in Aeginea, why not length and breadth as well? Had a crack yawned and swallowed me whole, I would not have been surprised.
Once I joined him, Kol whipped out the length of braided thong that tied up his hair and bound one of my wrists to the narrow column. “Hold up,” I said. “What are you—?”
“The binding is to keep thee safe, rejongai, lest thou shouldst move untimely and fall. Stian insists we work thy remasti here, and not solely that the exposure might discomfort thee. This rock is called Stathero and plunges deep into the heart of this mountain, which is his sianou. Stathero hath a mighty presence, and wind is necessary for this passage as water was needed for the first. But thou needst not worry. I made my own remasti here and emerged unbroken.”
Stian’s sianou. I was not soothed. Stian valued Kol.
My uncle motioned me to stand straighter. “We must imagine that the rain hath sufficed to cleanse thee. I understand this passage comes hard upon thy first. Thy separation gards have not yet settled into their pattern, and thou hast much to learn as a wanderkin. Yet thou art full grown already and resilient, I believe, thus new changes should not daunt thee. Art thou willing to continue?”
I nodded, but kept my mouth closed lest my stuttering resolve declare this lunacy gone far enough.
He inhaled deeply and bowed. I returned the formality as best I could, tethered like a wayward goat. But then a blast of wind staggered me. My fingers closed around the black spire, and my free hand as well, and I wished heartily for a thicker leash.
Kol briefly touched his hands to my shoulders. Then, impossibly, he began to dance. His unbound hair billowing wildly in the wind, he spun on his toes about the perimeter of the rock. One misstep, one miscalculation, and he must crash to earth. No winged angel, he had leaped from the high branches of the ash tree, not flown, and Stathero reached more than three times the ash tree’s height. In fascinated horror I watched the stars grow hazy and the moonlight dim, and I heard no music but the howl of the wind. “Kol, do have a care.”
By the time a breathless Do not be afraid appeared in my head, I could not heed it. The bluster atop Stathero had grown to a shrieking gale, tearing at my hair and rippling my skin, lashing me with particles of ice and whips of cloud. Had I the benefit of clothes, they would have been torn away. My own gards pulsed a dull gray-blue, yet all perception fled as if the south wind blew straight through my head to empty it of thought, of prayer, of memory, of identity, and the north wind reached deep to snatch the very breath from my lungs. The world shrank to a roaring knot of black and gray, threaded with the blue lightning that was Kol. And then the lightning struck and set my back afire.
Somewhere Kol’s voice called to me, but I could not heed it for the burning. The wind tore my free hand from the column and raised me in its giant’s grip. Bound only by Kol’s tether, I fought the wind, drew in my limbs, and crouched lower to find purchase on the rock. I touched my hand to the cold surface and released magic, but I could summon no thoughts save Let me be somewhere else than this and Please don’t let it blow me off the edge and some fool’s apology for causing such chaos atop the broken rock. Roaring, devouring, the lightning reached over my shoulder to fire my breast, and I closed my eyes and screamed…
“It is done, rejongai. Thou art—” The hands that had untied my wrist and now rested so gently on my scorched shoulders withdrew abruptly. “Stian! Sagai! Come up, quickly.”
I was far too weary to heed unexplained urgency. My head rested on my arms. When had I last slept? The bitterly cold world whispered hints of rosecolored light around my eyelids. The wind had settled to a modest bluster, but something blocked it, so that it touched my face only now and then. My legs felt odd. Kneeling. Cold. Heavy. I didn’t bother to look. Moving, thinking, choosing what to do next…those tasks waited far beyond me. I craved sleep.
Approaching voices. “…never seen such…not precisely a hole, but a niche…to fit…”
“…some error in thy kiran…”
“My kiran intruded not upon this rock, sagai.” Kol stood over me as he pronounced this chilly conclusion.
I wished they would take their bickering elsewhere. A sunbeam touched my cheek, a lancet that pricked my veins, infusing warmth and light, as if I had drained the Bucket Knot’s prize butt of mead. The fond memory of my favorite sop-house roused such a prodigious thirst as no man had ever suffered. The wind and lightning had surely burned out every dram of moisture in my body, and I would lick old Stian’s toes did I imagine he had brought a wineskin with his grim company. As I had no wish to be subject to further insults, I kept my heavy head where it was.
“Didst thou sense a breach, Stian? What does it mean that he could do this?”
“No. And I cannot—” The elder Dané bit off his words. Did I not think it ludicrous, I would have called him frighted. “Get him beyond my boundaries, Kol. But let him not stray from thy sight until I come to thee.”
The knots in my burning back did not relax as Stian’s angry presence receded and vanished.
“Come, get up, Valen,” said Kol, tugging on my arm. “Thou’lt have to extricate thyself.”
I lifted my boulder of a head, stared at the Dané’s toes, and realized my eyes were below the level of his feet. So the rest of me…I blinked, squinted, and peered downward.
I sat in a hole—actually more like a small, dark cave hollowed from the surface of the rock. My legs were tucked around a small protrusion, preventing Kol from pulling me straight out.
I looked up at my uncle, whose face was shadowed against a brightening sky. “This isn’t usual, is it?”
“No. This is not usual,” he said, dry as sunburned leaves. “Somehow your remasti has caused an unnatural change in Stian’s sianou, one of the most stable locales in all the Canon.”
“The wind,” I said. “Never felt such a wind. And lightning.”
He gave me his hand, and I untangled myself from the rock that appeared to have melted and hardened again in just such a tidy nest as to hold me. “The wind did not do this, rejongai. Thou hast done it—and if by accident rather than intent, that is perhaps worse. Assuredly were this known among the long-lived, knee breaking would be the kindliest remedy proffered thee.”
I did not want to imagine consequences worse than crippling. Nor did I want to remember my prayers for shelter or think of what power might shape rock. Such wonders could have naught to do with Valen the Incompetent. I stepped out of the little bowl. Movement and the resulting sting front and back reminded me of the occasion for my presence atop this hellacious boulder. Apprehensively I glanced down. Gods among us…
A tangle of fading sapphire traces marked my breast and belly. Kol stepped back and cocked his head to one side, then walked around behind me.
“Stathero hath taken no offense at thy int
rusion. Its likeness forms the gard on thy back, and here”—his finger traced an outline on my breast—“I have a thought we may find a sea star, a dog whelk, perhaps other beings from my own sianou.” He sighed, and rueful resignation scribed his face as clearly as his dragon. “To carry so clearly the markings of the places thou hast touched…and so early…those things, too, are not usual.”
Twisting my head in an attempt to see my back near broke my neck. That the marks faded into silver as the sun rose higher did not help. I closed my eyes and pretended I did not feel like some marketplace oddity come from savage lands to swallow fire and juggle hoops.
“Come, Valen. Thy tasks and lessons have scarce begun. And we must leave my sire’s sianou that he may examine this night’s work in peace. Thou’lt come to envision thine own gards, as their use becomes a part of thy nature. If thou art fortunate, their line and color will please thee.”
We began the long climb down Stathero’s jagged south face, a matter that consumed all my attention. Down, even in daylight, was at least as terrifying as up in the dark. Yet from the number of questions that tumbled out of me when my feet at last touched the ground, at least a bit of my mind had been working.
As we hiked down the mountain, away from Stathero and Stian, Kol responded to my barrage of queries with studied patience.
“The gards fade naturally in sunlight, save when we dance or otherwise focus our needs upon them. Once fixed in design, they do not change. Some believe they express a truth about the spirit who wears them…
“Wearing coverings, such as human garb, that hide the gards inhibits our use of them and the power they carry. Excessive covering and lack of use will weaken them. To travel the paths of linked remembrances requires full use of the gards…
“Males with maturing bodies oft bind their loins for dance training to ease soreness, but they cannot persist in it too long else they’ll not progress as they should…
“Yes, we sleep and eat and drink, though not so frequently as humans. Of course we enjoy it. We do not understand why Picus’s ‘one god’ prizes dirt and hunger. The sea doth not starve itself of rain to satisfy the requirements of the Everlasting…