by Carol Berg
I knelt and touched the damp earth, snowflakes melting on the back of my blue-scribed hand. The land’s sickness coursed through me like a river of sewage, bearing the stink of betrayal, mindless ravaging, and death. I welcomed it, allowing it to fuel anger and temper the steel of my resolve. Whatever I had to do to stop this, I would do.
“We need to move,” said Saverian, tapping a cold hand on my shoulder. “This place is too open. Someone…something…unfriendly lurks here.”
“Did you not say such feelings are but a body’s humors mingling?” I said, bitterness overflowing. “You are part alchemist, Mistress Mage, so repair them yourself.” But I rose and led her southward.
Recovered equanimity told me when we passed beyond the boundaries of my mother’s poisoned resting place. The gloom lightened a bit. I could sense the sun nearing the zenith behind the layered cloud. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was feeling a bit useless earlier and should not have taken it out on you.”
“We could both use a real bed.” Save for a fleeting smile, her expression was etched with determination. What drove her? Never had I known a woman so complicated. Strong, though. And honest. I could understand why Osriel trusted her with his life—and why he valued her prickly company.
“You never told me what you learned of Llio’s curse.”
She hitched her cloak about her shoulders. “It’s difficult to know what to believe. Picus swallows every tale and grinds it in the mill of his faith. Simply stated, Llio broke the world. Somehow. Picus says that Danae speak of four sacred places, the first sianous where the first four of their kind were born of the Everlasting, brought to life and given bodily form. These four are the Mountain, the Plain, the Sea, and the Well.”
As always, the mention of sianou joining made my skin creep. “My mother’s Well.”
“Exactly so. The guardians of the Four are always exceptional dancers. Llio, the halfbreed son of a Dané named Vento and a human woman, became the chosen of the Plain. Among his many couplings—it seems most Danae are not singular in such matters—Llio mated with a human woman named Calyna, and got her with child.”
Saverian warmed to her storytelling, as we ascended the terraced foothills that would lead us to the Sentinel Oak. The snow swirled thicker, and the wind blustered as we came out of the valley.
“On the spring equinox, Llio attacked another Dané during the dancing of the Canon, and in the ensuing struggle, Llio died. From that hour the Plain was lost to the Canon. Picus does not know why or how—he babbled about human legends and the lost city of Askeron. But the Danae blame Llio’s half-human temper for this great breaking and their decline in fertility that followed. They vowed that no halfbreed would ever dance the Canon.”
“Thus they break our knees.”
“That’s only the beginning of the deviltry.” Saverian double stepped to catch up with me again, and I tried to slow my pace to accommodate her. “Llio’s father, Vento, held Calyna captive until the child was born, then drove the mother from Aeginea, while keeping the infant. But Calyna knew of the Danae’s weakness—this bleeding rite they call the Scourge—and she bled some poor human to poison Vento’s sianou when he took his sleeping season. As it happened, Vento also had a full-blooded Danae elder son, none other than Tuari, the present archon. Tuari used the child to trick Calyna to fall off a cliff! He claimed he did it to prevent Calyna telling other humans about the Scourge. But Stian, who was archon, believed Tuari did the murder from shame and vengeance, and he condemned Tuari to take beast form every summer until Llio’s child reached maturity.”
“So Llio and Tuari were half-brothers,” I said, astonishment stopping me in my muddy tracks. “Saints and angels, no wonder Tuari has no use for human folk. Or for Stian’s family either.”
Saverian bobbed her head in a most satisfied manner. “Humans are not the only fools who cripple themselves with lust. Sin begets sin. And did you guess? The child of Llio the halfbreed and poor murdered Calyna was the same crippled halfbreed girl Ronila who stained Picus’s virtue!”
“Gods!”
As all these threads raveled and unraveled, our urgency redoubled. We hurried through the chilly gloom, wondering what it meant that the Danae had now lost two of their four holiest places. And we speculated about Ronila’s evidence that had driven Picus to such extremity as deserting Eodward and living out his life in penance. Saverian said the monk had refused to discuss the woman.
At last, weary beyond bearing, we dragged ourselves up the last steep rise. Across the rock-laced meadow stood the Sentinel Oak. Saverian leaned heavily on my arm, no longer reluctant to accept help. “Too much to hope that Osriel is camped at Caedmon’s Bridge,” I said.
“He told me he intended to return to Renna straightaway from Aeginea. But then again, he didn’t mention he planned to leave you tied to a tree with broken knees. Damnable prick.”
Smiling at her vehemence, I knelt and touched earth. I needed only my Cartamandua bent to find my way back to the human realm from here.
The patterns of the Danae were scribed everywhere upon this land—the fine sprays of silver, whorls and roundels, ovals, spirals, and multiple sets of straight lines that crossed to form gridlike shapes. What marvelous patterns must radiate from the four great sianous, the oldest, the first.
Though, for the first time, I felt close to answers, I’d no time to consider the earth’s mysteries. We needed to find our prince and prevent him using whatever grant he had bargained from the Danae, lest the backlash of Tuari Archon’s hatred make our problems worse. Magic flowed through my fingertips as I held in mind Caedmon’s Bridge…the grim verges of Evanore…the snow-buried barrens we had left behind…every edge and sweep etched on my memory. And instinct led my eye to one bright track leading into a thicker night and deeper winter—into human lands.
“Valen!” Saverian’s tense whisper brought my head up. She crouched beside me, pointing to the Sentinel Oak. From beneath its bare canopy three Danae moved deliberately toward us. Likely it was my imagination that told me two of them carried wooden clubs.
I grabbed Saverian’s hand and bolted. The guide thread led us straight toward the spot where Caedmon’s Bridge should span the Kay, and I dared not deviate from it in hopes I could take us to the human realm some other way.
The Danae changed course to intercept us. We had no hope of outracing them, and naught would prevent them following us into the human plane. I needed to shift us far from this place.
As we sped across the hillside, I focused on the great rocky pinnacle that overlooked this mead and recalled another rocky peak that overlooked a barren hillside. Both of them should house a fortress. “Physician,” I said, breathless. “Pin your eyes straight ahead. Yell at me the instant you glimpse Caedmon’s Bridge.”
She jerked her head. The blood pounding in my ears near deafened me, as I concentrated on the fortress rock and the thick straight walls I knew existed atop it in the human realm. At the same time, I built the image of the second fortress: its rarefied air, its looming mountain neighbors, its thick, safe stone, the smell of warriors’ piss along the inner walls, the welcoming fire of torches and the boom of the sonnivar, pitched to match no other in any world. Not at all a subtle leap.
The Danae cut a swath of sapphire through the snowy night. Moth wings gleamed upon a female’s breast and brow. I gritted my teeth and dragged Saverian faster, gripping the dual images of the fortress. This would be enough. It had to be.
“The bridge!” gasped Saverian at the same time a killing frost enveloped us.
Trusting her word that we had entered the human plane, I shifted course abruptly, angling back across the hill toward the rocky summit of Fortress Groult, putting us directly on a course for the closing Danae. Then I reached into the blue fire that raged from my own breast and drew forth magic…
Harsh breath crackled and froze the hairs in my nose. My bare feet skidded on a patch of ice, and as Saverian and I crashed to earth, I whooped in exultation. We lay tangled in a
heap at Renna’s gates, and the Danae were nowhere to be seen.
Even the blinding pain in my head and the wrenching spasms in my empty gut could not damp my good humor. I had seen across the boundaries of Aeginea clearly enough to build the shift—a work of the senses that Kol had said was impossible for his kind. My every instinct insisted gleefully that I could have worked the shift directly, before we had even crossed the physical boundary between Aeginea and Navronne.
Arms and elbows dug in my gut. Boots scraped my legs. My throbbing head slammed abruptly into the frozen ground. “Gods, woman”—I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth to hold back the surging bile—“give me a moment’s peace.”
“Put on this cloak, fool.” Even sick and frozen, Saverian could pierce a man’s craw with her disdain. She threw something scratchy and wet over me. “You don’t want anyone to see you…like this.”
I thought at first she meant heaving, but when I drew my hand away and glimpsed the delicate outline of a dog whelk nestled in fronds of sea grass that twined my fingers, I understood—and blessed her practical wisdom. The brightness of my gards near cracked my skull. I closed my eyes and pulled the cloak around me. “Need to find my braies and hose.”
By the time Saverian screamed out her name to the sentries, most of my gards were covered, and I had even donned the pureblood mask I’d found in the pocket of my cloak. Saverian and I stood in a delicate balance, supporting each other, but if someone didn’t open the gates soon, they would have to drag us in by the heels.
The gates ground open with a soul-scraping cacophony. A torch flared the dark tunnel, searing my eyes, but I could not mistake Voushanti’s bulk in company with the soldiers.
“We need to see Prince Osriel as soon as possible,” said Saverian.
“Unfortunately His Grace is not in residence,” said Voushanti. “Dreogan, prepare to close the gates. Muserre, Querz, wake Mistress Elene and tell the steward to prepare hot food and wine for the physician and the pureblood. I’ll escort them in.”
“Where in the name of all holy gods is he?” I said, unreasonably irritated, as my bowels churned.
Voushanti waited until the three warriors had left us. Then he turned his gaze our way, the red centers of his eyes flaring savagely. “Our master has been taken captive, sorcerer. He lies in the dungeons of Sila Diaglou.”
PART THREE
Ever Longer Nights
Chapter 18
“How did this happen?” I said, rubbing my head to keep my sluggish blood flowing. I would need to sleep soon or I’d be gibbering. But not yet. Not until I understood the magnitude of this disaster. “You’re sure the witch doesn’t know his true identity?”
“We have no reason to believe she knows he is the prince,” said Voushanti. The mardane stood stiffly at the door of Elene’s retiring chamber. He had brought Saverian and me straight from the gates. “My lord’s saccheria struck him hard just as we left the Danae. In the physician’s absence, he chose to ride on to the monkhouse, where Thane Stearc would be able to care for him.”
“Papa always keeps a supply of Osriel’s medicines,” said Elene, her circled eyes speaking raw grief and desperate worry. “Saverian sees to it that he knows what to do for every variant of the disease. He had to ride as Gram. No one remaining at the abbey knows him as anyone but Papa’s secretary.”
Saverian huddled by the hearth wrapped in a dry blanket. Barely controlled fury had sealed her lips since she’d heard that all her worst fears for Osriel had come true. She clearly blamed herself.
I perched on a window seat, pretending I was not within walls. As long as I could see the sky, my lungs did not feel quite so starved or my stomach quite so certain it was going to turn wrong way out.
Elene, flushed as summer dawn, sat in a padded armchair, a bright-colored shawl covering what her shift and hastily donned bliaut did not. Sleep had left half of her short bronze braids unraveled, the others matted or sticking every which way. Heat rose from her as from a smoldering bonfire. “Sila Diaglou and a small force lay in wait at Gillarine for Papa to return from the warmoot. Before the priestess could remove Papa from the abbey, Osriel walked through the gate and right into her arms.”
Anger and resentment bulged Voushanti’s fists and twisted his scarred mouth. “My lord insisted I return to the bridge with my men as soon as we sighted the monkhouse gates. He did not permit disobedience.”
I squirmed at the remembrance of Voushanti’s battles of will with Osriel. Their hellish link of enchantment and submission still confounded me.
Elene beckoned me to her side and thrust a crumpled parchment into my hand. “The witch dispatched two of the monks to carry this message to Renna. Can you fathom her insolence?”
The precisely formed letters flowed into their usual incomprehensible blotches. My own cheeks hot, I shoved it back at her and returned to my window. “So tell me, what does it say?”
Elene frowned for a moment before her expression cleared in understanding. “Forgive me, Brother. Here, I’ll read it…” She smoothed the page and began, her voice swelling with repressed fury.
Osriel of Evanore,
Believing our partnership holds more promise for Navronne’s future than our enmity, I extend to you my sisterly goodwill and offer an exchange of benefits. Our purposes do not and cannot coincide. I serve Powers beyond the ken of any mortal born, while you serve your own secret pleasures of a diabolical odor. Yet our interests may not conflict in every instance.
You hold an injured monk, the chancellor of Gillarine Abbey, known to be involved in this Karish lighthouse foolishness. As your deeds exemplify no maudlin sympathies for Navronne’s peasants, I cannot conceive that this errant project holds any innate value in your estimation.
On the other hand, your position as Evanore’s lord makes your defensive strength dependent on a handful of ancient families who demand certain strict loyalties and protocols. Unfortunately, one of your warlords seems to have connived with these Karish librarians, and I have caught him at it. But he has convinced me he cannot work magic.
Perhaps you are strong enough to control your clansmen even while abandoning one of them to your adversaries. But if you prefer to avoid a disruption among your supporters, I can offer you this bargain. I will return your errant Thane Stearc in exchange for the monk Victor. To sweeten the offering, I will include your pureblood’s catamite. I doubt your warlord’s diseased scribe could survive the journey, but if you prefer him to the boy, you may have him instead. I believe we shall both be well pleased with the outcome of the trade, and our relative strengths will remain in balance.
I require this bargain be completed before the solstice. Do you agree to it, take the monk to the crossroads at Gilat on the Ardran High Road and send word to me at Fortress Torvo.
In the glory of the Gehoum,
Sila Diaglou
“Damnable…vile…” Rage threatened to cut off what remnants of use remained in my exhausted brain. “Gods ship them all to the netherworld!”
“Does anyone else find this letter’s language odd?” asked Saverian, her fiery anger banked by curiosity. “I thought the woman disdained learning.”
“She didn’t write it,” I said. “Gildas did. Who else would slander a child?” I pressed the heel of my hand to my forehead as if it might prevent my skull’s imminent disintegration. “Why would they trade one for the other? Stearc can open the lighthouse as well as Brother Victor, right?”
“No.” Saverian returned to the hearth stool. “The opening requires two paired warders—one embodying the unlocking spell, one with power to release it.”
“And Gildas knows this?”
“Not unless they’ve tortured it out of someone,” she said. “Until this hour, I’ve been the only person outside the four warders themselves who knew. Luviar and Brother Victor were one pairing. Stearc and Osriel the second. The priestess and her monk don’t understand what they have.”
“Neither my abbot nor I revealed the secret.” An
ill-favored little man wearing a black cowl and an eye patch shuffled through a side door not three paces from me, leaning heavily on a cane.
“Brother Victor!” I popped up from the window seat. Only fear of crushing his fragile bones kept me from embracing him. Which would have been an entirely unseemly greeting for the chancellor of Gillarine, and an act I would never have contemplated when I lived there. But I could not help the surge of pleasure as I bowed, cupping one palm in the other and extending them in an offering of Iero’s blessings.
He smiled back, stuffing his cane under one arm long enough to return the blessing. “Dear Brother Valen, one of my three blessed saviors”—he nodded graciously to Voushanti and Saverian. “It is a grace to see you returned safely to our company. Though, as always, you present yourself at inconvenient times.”
As I helped him settle gingerly into the chair beside Elene, he glanced curiously at my hands and then quickly to my face. I snatched my hands back under my cloak, hiding the marks that had paled to silver. I’d not told Elene or Voushanti of my own particular adventures in Aeginea as yet. Osriel’s predicament preempted every other concern.
“These secret pairings…” I began, returning to the lighthouse secret. Elene could not work magic, but Brother Victor was a pureblood sorcerer. The puzzle pieces shifted. “So, Mistress Elene, Osriel didn’t send you back here to assume Brother Victor’s burden, but to partner with him. To take Luviar’s place.”
She dipped her head, tears brightening her eyes. “We dare not leave my father and Osriel there together. Sila Diaglou will give them up only so long as she believes that only one warder is necessary. A pureblood warder. Dear, brave Brother Victor has agreed to the exchange.”
“Brother!” Saverian looked up in shock. “You can’t. You’re scarcely walking!”
“And what of Jullian?” I snapped. “You don’t think the priestess will notice you choosing to retrieve a sick man over a healthy, innocent boy?” That no one seemed concerned over the boy made me irrationally angry. I had yet to admit that Osriel’s life was worth the saving.