by Carol Berg
I stuffed the bread into my mouth, making sure to savor every morsel. I’d sworn not to think of souls. I’d plenty more worries closer to hand. “Why would Kol be summoned so abruptly? He seemed wary, but not afraid.”
Picus shook his head. “Tuari hath neither favor nor use for Stian or his kin. If the archon has staunch witnesses to thy rescuing, he’ll happily bury Kol.”
“Bury…” Of course, that’s why Kol had said Stian might come for me, if he could not. The gummy bread clogged my gullet. “Iero’s grace, I must go after him…save him.”
“Fie on that, lad. Ye’d make his good deed a waste and end up broken and prisoned alongside him. None’s so clever as Kol, and he’ll not be easily locked away. They need him.”
I recalled Stian’s words. “Because of his dancing.”
“Because his line is fertile!” Saverian’s declaration burst out like floodwaters through a breached dike. “Picus says the Danae have always been slow to reproduce—likely a matter of their long lives—but the problem has grown worse in the years since Llio’s curse. Children have grown so rare among them that these Harrower poisonings are devastating. They can’t replace those lost. For a Danae coupling to produce two offspring, as Kol and Clyste’s parents did, is unheard of. That’s why they were enraged when Clyste’s child disappeared. To learn that she wasted her fertility on a human mate has surely infuriated them all the more.”
“Aye,” said Picus. “They’re sore diminished from their greatest glory. Tuari blames humankind for all their ills.” The monk’s big hands fell still, and he closed his eyes as if praying. “Sin begets sin.”
“Fear for survival will drive a species beyond custom and boundaries, Valen.” The physician crouched at my side, her jade-colored eyes drilling holes in my skull. “Picus says that this Tuari’s despite is so great that any bargain worked with a human—especially one of Eodward’s kin—is surely devised to turn upon the human party…”
…and Elene believed that Osriel had come to Aeginea to bargain for power—a magical alliance to fuel the dread enchantment waiting at Dashon Ra. I could not imagine the magnitude of the working Osriel planned. But surely a backlash from its failure would be his ruin…and Navronne’s. No wonder Saverian was agitated.
The monk filled my emptied bowl from the ale crock at his elbow, glancing from one of us to the other, his eyes sharply curious. “What troubles thee, friends?”
I took a swallow of thin ale. “Good Picus, I must get this lady home. She guards Prince Osriel’s health and has been from his side too long. As Kol can care for himself, I’ll see her safely back to her duty. We’ll need a few provisions for the road, lest my poor skills delay us.”
“But ye said Kol told ye to bide.” His sheepskin dropped into the mud, and his broad brow knotted in concern.
Who knew how many human days had passed since Osriel had given me up to the Danae? Instinct told me that the winter solstice raced toward us with the speed Nemelez drove her chariot of ice through her demonic lover’s fiery kingdom.
I drained the bowl and returned it to the monk. “We dare not wait. Tell Kol I’ll return here as soon as may be.”
We took our leave within the hour. Now I’d had a little rest and food, the cold did not bother me so much, but we bundled my thick hose, winter tunic, belt, boots, and pureblood cloak with Picus’s dried fish, a skin of his ale, a clay bowl, and the remainder of his bread. Picus insisted Saverian keep the blanket he had lent her. “Best I not inhale the scent of a woman lest my dreams illustrate the sins I’ve banished from head and heart.”
I bowed deeply, crossing my clenched fists over my heart—Gillarine Abbey’s signing speech for farewell and a reminder to remain staunch in one’s vows and devotions. Picus, eyes bright, returned the gesture solemnly. “I shall sincerely try to hold fast to my tottering virtue, Brother Halfbreed. But if a word as to the meaning of this haste should fall upon mine ear at thy return, I do not think Iero would grudge it.”
“When I can, Brother. When I can.” I grinned and waved as we headed into the chill autumn night.
At every step of those first hours, Saverian and I worked at cross purposes, my long gait unaccommodating to her quick, careful steps, my inclination to go over obstacles while she preferred under or around. And though I could not see well in the thick dark of the woodland, I could rely on my bent. She could see nothing at all. After she stumbled for a third time, near breaking her skull, I took her arm to steer her between the bare limbs and woody underbrush that snagged her cloak and skirts. That only made our disparities more awkward.
Before long, she sputtered and shook off my hand. Waving me to go on ahead, she snatched up a dry limb and set it gleaming with yellow light that had naught to do with fire. “I’ll see to my own feet, thank you. By the Mother, how ever does a blind person manage without going mad?” She dogged my steps, tight-lipped save when urging me to go faster.
Happily, we soon emerged into the open, gently rolling country to the south. I knelt and sought a route to the Sentinel Oak, the only way I knew to get us back to the human plane. As in the garden meadow, the landscape took shape upon my mind’s canvas in a single grand leap of understanding, rather than the slow building of the past. A confusion of tracks sprawled before us—migrations of great herds of elk and wild horses, footpaths of deer and Danae folk, and a great blight of blood in some past epoch—but no settled roads. And, unfortunately, the oak lay hundreds of quellae to the southwest, beyond expansive forests, a sizable rise in elevation, and at least two major river crossings. To travel the distance afoot would take us more than a month.
“But you’ve learned to journey as Kol does,” said Saverian, when I announced this unhappy news. Like a fine hunting hound, she seemed poised to charge off in whatever direction I pointed.
“Only once,” I said, sitting back on my heels and scratching my head. “And yes, I ended up in approximately the correct location. But I’ve too little familiarity with Aeginea to know many landmarks to use for shifting. Danae wanderkins are supposed to explore for years to learn the landforms and plants and trees and such.”
Snowflakes flurried from overburdened clouds, melting quickly on our cloaks. A frost wind from the south had whipped the woman’s deep-hued cheeks to a rosy brown. I’d been so sure I could get us home. Cocky wanderkin, Kol would say. Recognize thy limits.
Saverian was not so easily discouraged. “Osriel says that human lands and Aeginea are actually the same; we just experience different aspects of them in the two planes. You’ve traveled all over. You know Navronne.”
“But no Navron cities exist in Aeginea, no roads, no houses. The trees and forests are all grown up differently…”
Yet she was right. The terrain should be the same. Since I had walked into Aeginea, I had seen the chasm of the River Kay, the familiar climb from the valley of the Kay toward the mountains, and the rock of Fortress Groult, even though the fortress itself did not exist in this plane.
“Come on.” I made for the top of a rocky little knob half a quellae ahead, stopping only when I reached its crest. Squinting and puzzling at the landforms, I reached up to clear the melted droplets from my lashes, only to see a sickly thread of pale blue snaking about my fingers and up my arm into my sleeve. Laughter welled up from deep inside.
“The humor in this situation entirely escapes me,” said Saverian, heaving and gasping as she finished the sharp little climb and halted beside me. Her magelight had paled to the color of cream, and breath plumes wreathed her head. Her vehemence triggered a bout of coughing, aborted by a great sneeze.
“Are you all right?” I said. Her flushed cheeks flared brighter than her magical light.
“Well enough, considering I’m hiking into nowhere with a man whose walking pace is a modest gallop. Is that the joke?”
“I knew you’d wish no coddling,” I said, shoving my bundle of clothes and provisions into her hands. “You should have yelled at me to slow down.”
I unlaced my bra
ies and shirt. She stared as if I were a lunatic. Which I believed I was. “Indeed, physician, I am the great joke. Here I’ve been so preoccupied with Danae secrets, princely deviltry, Kol, Elene, and what in Iero’s name will happen to the lighthouse, not to mention this confounded route finding and the nature of Aeginea, that I’ve completely forgotten my lessons. If you’ll pardon my boldness, I am going to remove my clothes just now and attempt to do as you suggest—see if I can make some use of this motley collection of strangeness that is my body. Yell at me if you see anyone coming.”
She held out her hand to take my shirt, a smile tweaking the thin lips into something altogether more pleasant than their usual sardonic set. She waved her hand at my disrobing. “Please. Do whatever you must to get me home.”
I grinned and left the rest of my garb in her custody. For certain she was no wilting ninny.
Sitting cross-legged atop the little knob, I listened for the voices of stone. It seemed to take quite a while—or rather I managed it only after setting aside all fretful sense of time. Once I had rediscovered that quiet place where only a few faint declarations of Forever and Grind intruded, I allowed my Danae senses free rein and used the cascade of sensation to expand and deepen my Cartamandua seeing.
The cool dry air of summers past, along with the sharp blasts of past winters, teased my skin. The rich scents of soil and the buried roots filled my nostrils. I experienced not only the sounds and smells of wild Aeginea, but those of human habitation as well: sod houses, flocks of grazing sheep, the sharp bite of axes and tools. The blight of human blood and death near choked me. I explored deeper. Farther.
Were we walking the lands of Navronne, I would declare our location to be the upland moors of far northeastern Ardra, a long-settled expanse of sheeplands, grouse, and heather, whose streams and springs fed the riverlands of Morian. Indeed I had marched through those very moors with King Eodward’s legions, camped and foraged on that land—this very land—fought a great bloody battle here with the Dasseur, the barbarians who had stripped the Aurellian Empire of its northwest territories. Eodward had triumphed in that battle, making his stand on a dimpled fell that was the highest point of the region. Even then the barren mound, shaped so like a young girl’s breast, had reminded me of Mon Viel in the hills of southern Ardra, a region as familiar as my hand.
Carefully I shuffled through the cascade of impressions like a gem merchant through a bag of rocks, choosing only those that came through my eyes, while silencing all the rest. Then I stood up and peered again into the night.
As had happened on that strange night of my nivat madness, when Osriel and Voushanti and I had tracked Gildas’s flight from Gillarine, the landscape gleamed of its own pale light. The route my Cartamandua bent had prescribed stretched south and west across this luminous terrain as if a giant had unrolled a spool of gray floss and left it behind to guide us. But it was the landforms I examined.
“There,” I said, pointing to the gentle mound that sat in the center of the blood-tainted ground between us and the southern horizon…and, at the same time, far past it to that other swelling prominence some two hundred quellae to the south, known in the realm of humankind as Mon Viel. Reveling in the success of my combined Danae–human magic, I was already recalling the feel of the springy turf beneath my feet, the scents of wild lavender and lemon thyme, the calls of meadowlark and blackthrush that spoke freedom to a child run off from home in stinking, noisy Palinur. “We’re going there.”
Ignorance and inexperience put a quick damper on my satisfaction. Each leg of our journey took longer than it should. We had walked halfway to the horizon before I could join the knowledge of my senses with the power of my walking gards to make the shift southward to the slopes of Mon Viel. We were yet in Aeginea, of course, for the nearby heights where Caedmon’s royal city ought to rise in all its glorious might sat dark and bare.
Next it required three false starts before I gave up trying to use a rocky little grotto to walk into a similar nook I remembered from my journey in Mellune Forest. Perhaps I recalled too little of the snow-drowned nook’s scents or actual conformation to make the Danae enchantment work.
And then I discovered the risks of impatience when I tried to use a boggy spring surrounded by dry vineyards to plant us in the vastly different boglands of the River Kay. Saverian and I both spent two hours spewing our last month’s meals from fore and aft into the muck and praying we would expire before we drained ourselves to raw husks. Human bodies—even those half Danae—were evidently not meant to move through the world so abruptly.
Subtle moves, Kol had told me. I now understood that he’d not meant subtle in distance, but in distinction. To shift from one steep, shaded mountain path to another so much like it was easy, even were they a hundred quellae apart. To shift from a puddle among barren hills to a forest-bounded bogland was possible, but would wring a body inside out. At least I had remembered to “place” my feet, so that we writhed and retched on mostly solid ground and not neck deep in mud.
“If you can find anything to burn, I can spark a fire,” said Saverian in a croaking whisper. “Tea will get us on our feet again.”
She sat halfway up the steep little bank, her head resting on our provision bundle nestled in her lap. A seep around the woody roots of a larch had induced her to crawl up the bank to clean her face and hands. That she could consider doing more stoked my admiration. I yet wallowed in my own stink half in the mud, half out, thoroughly humiliated, exhausted, and shivering. I wasn’t sure anything could help.
“I’ll find something,” I said, dragging myself to my feet. This bog was the last place in the world I intended to die. Did I touch this muck with magic, I was certain I would hear the wails of drowned Harrowers, even across the barriers of the human plane and Aeginea.
I dragged handfuls of dry sedge and leatherweed and a few dead alder saplings from high on the bank to Saverian’s feet, and tore open cattail pods to provide tinder. Half an hour more and we sipped lukewarm tea made from Picus’s blessed herbs.
“I’m sorry,” I said, clutching the bundle of clothes in my lap, my throbbing head propped on one hand. “I need a bit more schooling.”
“You should put on those clothes,” said Saverian, ever the physician, as she passed me the blackened clay bowl. “Your lips are blue, and not with Danae sigils, and I can walk not one quat farther tonight. Assuming this is night.”
I gazed dully at the sky. Though it had gleamed azure in the wintry daylight at Mon Viel, it now glowered with the blue-black sheen of a magpie’s wing. I could not sense the sun anywhere. Snow dusted the landscape, and wind moaned over the bog, rattling the leafless willows.
“We can’t stay here,” I said. “This is Moth’s sianou. She hates humans—and has proved it. Would as soon drown us all as look at us. We can walk all the way to the oak if need be. Rest, get your legs back, and then we go.”
I downed a swallow of the rapidly cooling tea and passed it back. The pulse and twitter of a curlew echoed through the morbid stillness, reminding me of the deserted mine above Renna. “When are you going to tell me what Osriel plans?”
“I will not. I cannot.” She threw a rotting limb on the fire, and a veil of sparks spurted upward.
“Have you seen the place where he imprisons the souls? Have you felt them? It’s wrong, Saverian. Evil. They are so angry, so terrified, filled with hate. I’ve never felt the like.”
“Impossible. Those people are dead. Emotions are created by the living body and mind in response to changing circumstances. They are no more than the body’s humors infusing the blood, like the tincture in an alchemist’s vial. There is no such thing as a soul.” Her utter conviction was tinged with a bleak and weary sadness that surprised and grieved me. What had happened to her to cause so sere a vision of life?
“Then what does Osriel capture when he seals a dead man’s eyes in a calyx?”
“Waste. Dust. Echoes of life.”
“So why not tell me what he thin
ks to do with his nasty treasury? Certainly it’s not too dread to speak of, if he but plays tricks with dust and waste.”
“He is my lord and my friend. I will not violate his trust.”
I wished I had the wit to argue with her. So sharp and scholarly a mind as hers should not be burdened with so barren a philosophy. She was no ale-house philosopher, taking a position for the sake of argument. Yet having so recently examined my own state and come up with no conclusive evidence of a soul, I had no weapons to bring to a joust about the rest of humankind. And while I remained firm in my belief that the essence of a human person lived beyond the last breath, I certainly didn’t want Saverian providing sensible evidence to crush my own hope for the same.
As the last of our pitiful lot of fuel fell to ash, I stood up, slung the bundle over my shoulder, and pointed south along the bank, where in the other realm so like to this, Thalassa had escorted me toward Gillarine. “Let’s go.”
Saverian wasted no breath on conversation along the way, so I amused myself imagining what various monks would say did I come striding through their gates clad only in blue fire. And then I thought of Thalassa, and, for the first time in my life, found myself wishing I could talk with my sister…half-sister…no, half-niece…now. A priestess of the Mother, she could tell me of souls. It might be easier to hear the truth from her than from Picus or Saverian.
We left the treacherous bogland and soon trudged across the river-looped valley floor where Gillarine ought to lie. Clumps of slender beeches dotted the grassland, their trunks split and peeling. The limbs of scattered oak scrub curled like the legs of a dead spider. And everywhere patches of blackened, slimy grass testified to the land’s death—to my mother’s death and Gerard’s death—to poisoning by people who stole innocents like Jullian and slaughtered bold and noble spirits like Abbot Luviar.